


SN 1572

by prufrockslove



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 08:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 99,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14807441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrockslove/pseuds/prufrockslove
Summary: After colonization and Earth's devastation, Scully remains in one of the few safe, walled colonies, remembering the past and praying for some future with Mulder. Whatever the hell Mulder has become.





	1. 2

Title: SN 1572

 

Author: prufrock's love

 

Email: prufrockslove@yahoo.com

 

Rating: NC-17

 

Classification: Novel, Post-colonization, Angst, Dark MSR, Other

                                

Summary: After colonization and Earth's devastation, Scully remains in one of the few safe, walled colonies, remembering the past and praying for some future with Mulder. Whatever the hell Mulder has become.

 

Spoilers: Through early season 7

 

Disclaimer: Not mine; don't sue. This isn't intended for profit.

 

No archive permission is given except for Colonization Headquarters, AO3, and Gossamer.

 

Author's Note: A reworking of Negative Utopia

 

                     ***

 

We are survivors, not monsters.

 

October 2005 seems eons from January 2000. How impossible not even five years have passed. Five years, one-tenth of my life - a cosmic blink and two-hundred million human heartbeats. I- We- Our group has survived seventeen-hundred rotations of our little planet, with each day a current pushing us farther from the people we were Before. If I'm exhausted, alone - possibly hypothermic - I pause in the river of time and look back at the distant image of myself. A thousand years in the past, I see her: pantsuits, high heels, an FBI badge, a doctor coat, and a noble cause. Back when I called myself 'a survivor' and meant 'cancer.'

 

I am Dana Scully, the doctor and one-woman science and mathematics department of Alpha Colony. Five years ago, before the sky fell and the world cooled, Mulder and I brought monsters to justice.

 

The flukeman was a monster. Eugene Tooms and Warren James Dupre and Donnie Pfaster were monsters. Luther Lee Boggs. Those evildoers killed for pleasure, tortured and raped and consumed human lives in an orgasmic frenzy of personal entitlement; our old X-files office held a filing cabinet of dead monsters. Alvin Kersh and Cancerman and the consortium and all those who sold out Earth trying for a deal with alien devils: they were monsters. The colonists were monsters.

 

Aboveground, a brief, cool summer has become a cold fall. Autumnal leaves, morning frost. Even as the seasons return, we exist in a world as empty as outer space. We are changed. Hardened. Those who didn't harden after colonization didn't survive. Survivors, by definition, live. They rebuild. They go on as best as they can, but we are not monsters. We are the good guys. We build walls and guard towers to keep the monsters - human and nonhuman - out.

 

Fewer than five thousand people remain in North America, John Byers estimates, along with uncountable mutants and monsters in the shadows. A few Y2K preppers and other souls escaped by dumb luck, but most survivors are former military or government agents. Like us, they holed up in underground bunkers. Politicians and wealthy eccentrics made it into their well-provisioned doomsday lairs Before, but After, a hungry former-Secret Service agent with a Sig Sauer trumped a senator waving the Geneva Convention.

 

Most survivors are male. As a woman, I am an anomaly in the rusting ark of what remains of civilization. We constitute all the scientific knowledge, all the skills, all the humanity left after the colonist's ships blocked out the stars, bees spread the Purity virus, the alien creatures gestated and hatched, and the ships collected their young and moved on.

 

Two men occupy beds in the hospital ward of my medical clinic tonight, and my oil lamp burns on the 1960's-era metal table between them. Four more hospital beds remain empty. Without electricity, the bunker is dark and still and cold, like a vast tomb. In the dorm across the hallway, men snore. They mutter and shift as they sleep. My little generator putts and sputters. The refrigerator hums. I hear distant banging and cursing in the power plant, but mostly I hear nighttime wearing thin and Death approaching.

 

Cold numbs my fingers and makes my nose drip. I could move aboveground to moonlight and someone's warm hearth, but my medical clinic cannot. The solar grid went on the fritz last week, and all the old diesel generators are down at once. Walter Skinner has Byers' team working around the clock aboveground, and Skinner's spent all night cursing the "hippie-era, government-contractor pieces of shit" in the Greenbrier bunker's power plant.

 

My patient in bed 1 fell while repairing a barn roof, arrived comatose, and remains that way. He has no verbal, motor, or ocular response. No family. No friends concerned enough to visit. I have no MRI or CT machine to know the extent of his brain injury, let alone the means to treat it. The man in bed 2 is an outsider who, I believe, contracted food-borne botulism. He collapsed beside his vehicle at our east gate. Someone took pity, asked Skinner, and the unconscious man got carried into my clinic. His respiratory rate slows, and the ancient ventilator plugged in beside his bed might as well be an anchor. I could bag him and buy him a few more hours. Or, I could plug the ventilator into the generator currently powering my refrigerator and the precious stock of medications it preserves. Regardless of what I do, both men are CTD. Circling The Drain.

 

We are survivors, not monsters. I'm not hardened enough to shoot or smother my patients, and I'm not using the little medication I have to hasten their demise. Also, the incinerator doesn't work without electricity. They'll need buried. If they live until breakfast, I'll have help getting them into body bags and out of the bunker. The two men can continue CTD a few more hours.

 

A flashlight beam washes past the reception desk and crosses the floor to the hospital ward, where I stand watching the dying men.

 

"Dr. Scully," Prichard's deep voice calls. He was an Army medic and a flight nurse Before, and my right-hand medical man for the past year. A tall, barrel-chested, fifty-something Black man seemingly impervious to cold, he wears only flannel pajama bottoms. He squints at me sleepily. "You gonna bag him? You want a hand?"

 

I shake my head. "No. It's not worth the effort."

 

Wholly nonplussed, he asks, "What about the other guy? He gone? You need me to haul him out?"

 

I shake my head again. "A few more hours. Go back to bed."

 

Prichard rubs his shaved scalp and, barefooted, ambles back toward the dark, first floor dorm. If I'd said I wanted to smother my patients, Prichard would ask if he should hold the pillow or the flashlight. Alternately, if I'd wanted to perform a futile decompressive craniectomy by lamplight, he'd have sterilized an old hand crank drill.

 

Leaving my patients to die alone, I take the oil lamp and walk sixty feet to the room in the medical clinic once reserved for dentistry. We have no dentist, so I have a real bed in the one private bedroom in the bunker, with a sink and an old dental exam chair in one corner.

 

Instead of going to bed, I get the little box from a drawer holding primarily tampons. I keep the box at the back of the dresser drawer. It's not hidden, but not easily found. The box contains my old FBI badge, Mulder's badge, a broken man's wristwatch, and a 1999 Nokia cell phone I still expect to ring.

 

People survived inside the Mount Weather bunker, too. FEMA employees, mostly. Little remains of the California coast, according to rumors, but Skinner's talked to men from Cheyenne Mountain and from missile silos in Nebraska and Wyoming. Captain Houston, one of Skinner's men, says the doors of the Raven Rock, Camp David, and the congressional bunker remain closed. Whoever locked themselves inside, they never came out. Pockets of people survived everywhere, but Mulder and I: we survived here. In a decommissioned Cold War-era bunker in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, beneath the once-lavish Greenbrier Resort. After colonization, the bunker, ruined resort, and the land around it became Alpha Colony: walled, lawful, as close to self-sufficient as possible. Aside from my medical clinic, the executive suite, storage space, and a few dorms, we use the bunker to produce meals, water, power, and clean laundry these days. Five years ago though, Mulder and I took refuge inside these gray cement walls as a similarly cold, eternal night crawled past and Death approached. Not two men's deaths. Six billion deaths.

 

I sit on my high, four-poster bed and hold the two badges close to my lamp, looking at the faces from Before. I close my eyes. Slow my breathing. Wait for Mulder to listen. I pray to God and to the Virgin. I pray to Mulder's clockmaker god and whatever god remains.

 

I hear footsteps in the west hall and distant men's voices. The generator in the clinic. Skinner's gruff voice, cursing in or at the power plant. I feel my heartbeat and an empty place in my soul and the damp cold, but I don't feel Mulder's presence. I open my eyes, and his black and white image looks back at me. Spectral photography, Mulder might say. The captured image of a ghost.

 

I crawl beneath the heavy blankets, still wearing long underwear and scrubs, and holding the old badges. Shivering, I close my tired eyes.

 

Mulder doesn't come.

 

What seems a second later, a knock on the door startles me awake. Prichard's voice calls, "Dr. Scully, it's six-thirty." He pauses. "I'm gonna clear the bodies out of the beds. Corpses kinda set the wrong tone for company."

 

I've fallen asleep fully dressed, with the lamp still burning. "Okay."

 

"Boss man's sent you a patient. The guards are here, but I'll be right back."

 

"I'll be right there." I secret the FBI badges away.

 

In the reception area, my oil lamp casts shadows over Prichard's idea of a joke. On the counter, we have magazines. No receptionist greets patients, and the resident physician is a forensic pathologist, but Prichard's laid out pristine magazines for my patients' reading pleasure. The covers of _Time_ and _Newsweek_ report JFK, Jr.'s fatal plane crash, and President Clinton's impeachment, and the Harry Potter Phenomenon. The Y2K Insanity. The last issue, from mid-December 1999, touts 'The End of the World!' and 'Apocalypse Now.'

 

Despite our generator crisis, my morning cup of coffee waits on the counter, covered with a saucer so it stays hot.

 

Skinner's sent four armed guards. They crowd against one wall in my dim waiting room like sardines with automatic weapons. A dark-haired Caucasian woman in her late thirties sits in the single chair. She stares at the floor. Three tall, unfamiliar men stand next to her. The blond man is clean-shaven and short-haired, with cheekbones and blue eyes that belong on a Nazi recruitment poster. The other two men have beards; the Hispanic man has a buzz-cut, while the other has dark, wavy hair. The dark-haired Caucasian man is slim and handsome. He resembles Mulder so much I look twice at his bearded face. The men are in their late thirties or early forties and dressed as every man dresses After: part farmer, part soldier, part _Road Warrior._ I peg the blond and the Hispanic men as ex-military, and all three men as formidable. One carries a backpack; none carry weapons.

 

They seem unimpressed by my mood lighting and magazine display.

 

One of the guards escorting the strangers holds up a lantern and tells me, "The Director wants them in and out, doc."

 

I nod and take my first sip of coffee. Alpha Colony takes care of our own, but outsiders, at Skinner's discretion, can pay for medical care in services or supplies. Batteries, fuel, seeds, medicine: anything scarce. There's a barter system. My services are in high demand, but I don't set the exchange rate. Whatever these strangers want, they've met with Skinner, surrendered their weapons, and paid.

 

I make a 'shoo' gesture. Twice. Skinner's guards scowl but wait in the west hall, out of sight and within earshot.

 

"I'm Dr. Scully," I tell the outsiders, and set the coffee cup aside. "What can I do for you?"

 

Prichard passes through, casually carrying a corpse over his shoulder. The blond man watches Prichard leave, and glances around the shadowy room. He looks me up and down. "What kind of doctor are you, ma'am?"

 

I give my pat answer. "The only kind for four-hundred miles. What can I do for you?"

 

"Can you deliver a baby, ma'am?" He speaks with a military officer's formality and air of command, as if he's forgotten how to be anything but a soldier. "Perform routine OB/GYN procedures?"

 

The woman continues dully watching the floor. She isn't bleeding or writhing in pain or obviously pregnant. She's slim but not gaunt, and she looks clean. A thick brown braid hangs down her back. She has good hiking boots, a warm jacket, and an empty holster on her hip.

 

I nod. We have nine women of child-bearing age in Alpha Colony, besides me, and another woman in Purgatory. All those women have children; several women have multiple children under the age of four. I've had full-term women travel from Ashland and Providence Colony to deliver here, smuggled in the back of Captain Houston's transport trucks and smuggled out with their newborns. Birth control pills lose potency and latex breaks down, but the demand for sex - solace, comfort, contact - remains. Again, there's usually a barter system.

 

"I'm not performing an abortion," I inform them, though Skinner should know that.

 

"She's not pregnant." The Latino man speaks, sounding disapproving. I hear a faint Mexican accent, suggesting English at school but immigrant parents at home. He radiates the calm competence of a pediatrician or a TV anchorman, if either killed people for a living. A rough, recent scar bisects his left eyebrow, and another crosses his chin. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That's not what he asked, doc."

 

The second bearded man stands nearby. He watches me but doesn't look at the woman.

 

My head pounds from lack of sleep. After a silence, I ask, "Is one of you gentlemen expecting or are these questions hypothetical?"

 

The blond man puts his hand on the woman's shoulder. She looks up, seeming dazed. She's an attractive woman, with brown doe eyes, broad cheekbones, and full lips. Blunt bangs frame her face. "After my daughter-" she says in a mid-western accent, and falters. Her chest rises. "I got a copper IUD in 1999. They want you to take it out."

 

The scarred Latino man tells me, "I was a combat medic. I found an OB/GYN textbook in a library. There should be a string to pull it out, but there's no string." He holds out an olive green backpack with a red cross on it. "I brought everything the book said, doc. Speculum, forceps, rods, hemostats: all sterile. I have the textbook, too, if you need it."

 

I stare at the bag and the woman. The three men with her remind me of the Peacock brothers, without the inbreeding and homicidal rage. "They want me to take out your IUD?" Every pronoun in that sentence had something wrong with it.

 

She nods.

 

"Do they-" I fling a hand toward the three men, feeling some homicidal rage myself, "in the interest of timely gynecological care - want me to insert a new one?"

 

Her lips move, but no sound comes out as she says, "No."

 

"She wants a baby, Dr. Scully," the blond man says, still stony-faced. "We want a family."

 

"If she develops preeclampsia or gestational diabetes-" I find myself talking to the men instead of the woman. I take a breath and focus on her. "A pregnancy at your age is risky, even under ideal circumstances. As a medical doctor, I'm advising against this."

 

"Lynn," the blond man prompts.

 

Staring at the floor again, she says, "Take it out, Dr. Scully."

 

I curse Skinner, take the medic's bag, leave the coffee, and tell the woman to come with me. Lynn obeys, and the men, uninvited, follow. I give the usual instructions: undress from the waist down, lie back, feet in the stirrups, knees apart. After she fumbles with the laces, the silent bearded man squats down. He unties her hiking boots and pulls her boots and socks off. As the three men loom, Lynn manages her own empty holster, jeans, and underwear. She folds everything together and gives her clothing to the man who removed her boots. He sets her boots beside the table and tucks the bundle of clothes beneath his arm. After a moment, seeming to change his mind, he retrieves her boots and holds them, too.

 

On the table, she takes the blond man's hand and stares at the ceiling. The Latino medic holds the lamp as I don gloves, insert and open the speculum, and examine her. The bearded man with Lynn's clothing watches from a dark corner.

 

Gooseflesh covers her bare legs in the cold air.

 

"I feel it," I tell the men, as if my patient is a child and I should speak to the adults. "It's in place." I press again, wishing for longer fingers. "The string's probably been clipped too short and drifted into the uterus."

 

I sit back on my metal stool and sniff, unable to wipe my nose without contaminating my gloves. The woman stays on the exam table, feet in the stirrups, legs still apart.

 

"I don't have electricity for my ultrasound machine right now, so I'd be doing this procedure by feel. Fishing blind," I inform them. "Best case: I can dilate the cervix, locate and grasp the string with a hemostat, and pull the IUD out. Worst case scenario is the IUD has embedded in the lining of the uterus and would need surgical removal. I've never performed that surgery. At her age and with the risk of complications-" I sniff again and shake my head. "I'll talk with the Director, and he'll return whatever you've paid."

 

All three men nod. The ex-medic holding the light says, "We understand, doc. Go ahead. Try to fish it out." Quietly, he adds, "St. Luke, we beseech you to intercede."

 

I want to tell him God and the saints left Earth along with the colonist's ships, but instead I lecture, "If she gets an infection, my antibiotics are a decade out of date."

 

"Ours aren't," the Latino medic promises. "Go ahead."

 

The guard with the lantern peeks in the exam room doorway, checking. Usually Skinner has two guards escort anyone from outside the colony. This crew merits four.

 

I grit my teeth and lay out the instruments they brought. Everything is single-use or bagged and labeled as if they've been sterilized. I hope they are sterile; my autoclave currently works as well as my ventilator and ultrasound machine. There's no lidocaine. Or a laminaria dilator. Instead, I find a set of manual cervical dilators: metal rods of increasing diameter designed to be forced into the cervix. I have a vague recollection of learning this procedure, and whatever textbook they found was eons out of date Before. I think these are veterinary instruments.

 

"You'll feel pressure," I tell the woman. "Cramping like labor pains as the cervix dilates. The cervix has to open a few millimeters for me to reach the IUD. Breathe. Did you take Lamaze classes?"

 

Lynn watches the shadows on the ceiling. Her knuckles whiten as she grips the blond man's hand. She says, "Joe," in a frightened voice.

 

The Latino medic barks, "Stop. No." He lowers the lamp. "Lamaze is worthless. My wife did Lamaze. The book says-"

 

The blond man interrupts. "You're a medical doctor. Give her something for pain," he orders.

 

"This isn't Johns Hopkins. I have ten-year-old Tylenol 3 and some ancient Aspirin. Your choice," I snap. I feel my face flush and blood pressure rise farther. "You've traveled hundreds of miles and traded God alone knows what for Skinner to let you in here. Isn't this what you wanted? This procedure will involve pain, but in two weeks, you can pursue your plan to forcibly repopulate the planet, providing she and whoever's child she ends up carrying don't die from some minor complication that hasn't routinely killed anyone since the Middle Ages."

 

"No one's forcing anyone, ma'am," he informs me.

 

"This is despicable. Do you three have a chart? Names written on days on the calendar? And what the hell are you giving her? Benzodiazepines? What do you have her strung out on?"

 

From the dark corner, the slim bearded man asks politely, in a strong Cajun accent, "When you last been outside Alpha Colony, Dr. Scully?"

 

He's the oldest of the men, and he'd been silent so long I'd wondered if he was mute. With his hair and features, I expect Mulder's voice to come out of his mouth. Instead he sounds like the bayous of Louisiana - the southern corollary to Brewster and a few other mountain men who survived in West Virginia.

 

"Not since Before." I've been to an abandoned medical school near the outermost fence, searching for equipment and supplies, but never beyond the border of the colony.

 

"It's not pretty out there, for true, but me and Chico Joe and the GI boys: we doin' alright. We got livestock, a big garden," the Cajun man says. He still holds Lynn's clothing and boots. "Enough weapons for an army. A well, a good fishin' spot. Even a dog and a little tabby cat in the barn. Our power works. Chico, he keep us and the animals patched up. I can grow or fix 'most anything, me, and Leo and his cousin: they awful good at killing 'most anything. We don't need no chart, Dr. Scully. Lynn take care of us, and we take good good care of her."

 

My molars remain clinched.

 

"You want we should fight over her, you?" he asks casually. "Would that smooth your pretty red moral fur? You want me and the GI's or Chico Joe to slug it out? If we play 'last man standin' we get one man to hunt and carry water and split firewood and protect her - and so do she. Also, last man standin' probably be GI Leo, and for sure no Leatherneck gonna show a lady a good time."

 

"Don't be so sure," the Hispanic man - Chico Joe - responds. "On either count."

 

Blond Leo doesn't weigh in. That might require emotion or facial expression.

 

"We aren't monsters, Dr. Scully," the handsome Cajun man assures me. "Just people tryin' to keep living."

 

He glances at medic Chico Joe and at blond GI Leo. They each nod. After transferring Lynn's boots to his other hand, the Cajun reaches into his combat boot and retrieves a small plastic bottle. He passes the bottle to Leo, beside Lynn. "Morphine sulfate. She got 10 milligrams in her, and Joe's book say she can have more."

 

My hand stops in mid-air. Opiates are gold, if gold still held any value. The bottle contains concentrated morphine, and he's smuggled it into Alpha Colony rather than bartered with it. It's factory-sealed, meaning they have at least another bottle.

 

"You ask if I love her, I say yes. Yes, for true," he tells me, still in a slow, melodic Cajun drawl. "Like I loved my wife and son and baby girls. You ask Joe or Leo, they gonna say the same. But our wives, our families - they dead now." He takes a step closer, out of the shadows. The resemblance to Mulder is uncanny. "Somebody provide the food you eat, Dr. Scully. Somebody keep you safe. A pretty little thing like you, cher: the Director do all that just 'cause you the only doctor in four-hundred miles?"

 

The guards have migrated from the hall outside my medical clinic to the waiting area. One looks into the exam room, rifle at the ready.

 

I clear my throat. "You can't keep her sedated on morphine-"

 

Leo interrupts. "I know, ma'am. It's only for today." He looks at the woman and prompts sternly, "Right, Lynn?"

 

Lynn nods.

 

I must look unconvinced, because Joe says, "She can't be sedated out there, doc. It's too risky. If anything happens to me - to us - she has to be able to use a revolver. Whether she likes using it or not." His last sentence seems directed at Lynn and to reference some previous conversation between them.

 

I look at the empty holster atop the bundle of clothes the Cajun man holds. I hear Prichard return. He looks in but, rather than assisting, makes stripping sheets off the recently occupied hospital beds his priority. The only thing on this empty, perpetually cold planet that flusters Prichard is a patient with a vagina.

 

An army of one, I remove the speculum, administer another dose of morphine, and have the three fathers-to-be wait outside. "Enjoy the magazines," I tell them crisply.

 

The woman continues staring at the ceiling. I tell her to put her feet down, to rest and wait. She moves obediently. I cover her legs with a blanket. Her legs are free of bruising and were shaved a week ago. Bright pink polish decorates her neat toenails.

 

I tell her quietly, "A copper IUD can be effective for up to 10 years. Maybe long enough for you to reach menopause. I can drop a bent paperclip in the emesis basin and those three will never know the difference."

 

In a soft voice, she says, "Joe and Leo and Jeff had families, Before. Fox - he's back home - he's the only one who never had any kids. His girlfriend couldn't."

 

Caught off-guard, I hear the tightness in my voice as I echo, "Fox?"

 

"Captain Colin Fox, US Marines. Leo's cousin. They're good men, Dr. Scully. Good to me. They'll be good to my baby."

 

I don't speak, but questions race through my head: all pointless moral objections. With a little sleight of hand, I could drop a bent, bloody paperclip in the emesis basin and not tell her, either. Or, I could signal a guard. Tell Skinner Lynn's being abused or held captive. The rules of Alpha Colony apply to anyone inside Alpha Colony. Lynn would remain with us. If the three men are lucky, Skinner will shoot them. If they're unlucky, Skinner's busy, and Ahsan Moovera will deal with them. Moovera likes knives and precision; he dislikes messes and histrionics, but not as much as he dislikes rapists.

 

As we wait, the woman glances at the doorway. She sits up and, with clumsy fingers, opens her jacket and shirt. Unclasps the front of a white lace bra. She pulls my hand to the outside of her small, warm breast. Pressing hard, I feel one lump, and another, already spread to the lymph nodes.

 

"Colonist's ships came while my daughter was in the NICU. She was premature, but the doctor said she'd be fine. My husband was at the hospital in Omaha with her," she says quietly. "I had the misfortune to be home resting, with a well-stocked bomb shelter in our back yard." She closes her shirt, lies back, and resumes staring at the dark ceiling. "This isn't Johns Hopkins, Dr. Scully. There's no chemo, no radiation. I have how long? Two years? Three?"

 

"Do they know?"

 

She shakes her head, starting to look glassy-eyed. "You're not going to tell them. They're good men. Take the IUD out."

 

There's a hum like the engines of a ship. The overhead lights flicker and come on. I hear jubilance from the hall and men calling dibs on hot showers. Warm air falls from the ventilation system. In my lab, a centrifuge I'd forgotten to unplug begins to spin.

 

Prichard - nonplussed by maggot-infested wounds and gangrene - assists after I insist and from as far away as possible. I have Leo and Joe come in and hold Lynn's hands. Jeff puts her boots and clothing down and stands at her head, stroking her hair and talking softly to her in that melodic accent. My patient seems to drift in a peaceful twilight of morphine, likely the same way she'll drift out of this world within the next few years.

 

I get lucky on the second try. My hemostat clamps on the end of the inter-uterine device. I pull, and it slides right out: a bloody little plastic and copper T I drop in the emesis basin. 

 

                     ***

 

Pulling an all-nighter is exciting at twenty years old, unpleasant at thirty, and probably misery at fifty. I can speak for almost forty years old, and Walter Skinner looks even wearier than I feel. The lines around his brown eyes seem deeper, and his broad shoulders, bowed. Still, he brings a bowl of oatmeal and a request I accompany him outside. Above ground. "You really will get scurvy down here, Scully," he warns. "Pellagra. One of those sunlight-deficiency disorders."

 

I leave the oatmeal in my lab to cool, and Prichard and the guards to supervise the patient recovering in bed 1. Chico Joe lounges on bed 2, reading about the Harry Potter madness. Jeff is stretched out on the floor, dozing, and Blond Leo sits beside the woman, holding her hand.

 

Skinner reminds me to bring a jacket. He wears denim and flannel, and a mustard-yellow Carhartt coat frayed at the cuffs. Fresh scrapes dot his knuckles and wire holds his glasses together at one temple. He's clean-shaven and lately he's shaving off what remains of his hair. He wears two Glocks in a tactical holster fastened to his waist and thighs and, outside the bunker, has a M16 rifle slung across his back. The men in Alpha Colony call him 'Director Skinner.' The 'Assistant' part of his title fell from use years ago.

 

In the west hallway, the power plant hums and the cafeteria sounds like a frat party. "In my absence, the men are making optimum use of our newly-restored electrical system at mealtime?" I ask. A few months ago, someone scavenged an old film projector and a box of 1950's 8mm stag films that seem quaint by modern standards. We need diesel fuel and antibiotics and food; we have vintage pornography and expensive guitars and a CD collection to die for.

 

"I find Bettie Page a little much at breakfast, but tastes vary." As we walk, he puts his arm around my shoulders, something he seldom does in public. "I want that Missouri crew out as soon as possible. Did their woman have complications?"

 

"No, but I'd like to monitor her a few more hours," I answer. "They won't cause any trouble. If she conceives, they want to come back for me to deliver the baby."

 

He nods. "You're the doctor."

 

"And she's 'their woman.' She's their communal property." My pretty moral fur remains ruffled. "You had no issue with that? You're letting them leave with her?"

 

At the end of the long, low hall, the wide blast door is open. I see sunlight and scarlet leaves in the distance. Skinner says, "I have squirrels chewing through the wires on the solar grid, and hundreds of people depending on me to survive. The Missouri crew had goods to trade, and she's a consenting adult. The four of them don't need my approval."

 

"Five." I feel the need to stipulate that. "There's a fourth man back home, taking care of their place."

 

Men pass us, carrying in eggs and fresh milk and meat. Hoses pipe out water from the bunker's treatment plant, and carts wheel clothing and bedding to and from the laundry. A hundred men, each of Skinner's choosing, still eat and sleep in the bunker. Guards and foragers and traders and the men who oversee the power and water systems. A hundred men, Walter Skinner, and me. The rest of the men - and a few families - live in the abandoned buildings and hotel, in the remains of the little town, or along the river. A high, reinforced fence surrounds the bunker and hotel grounds. A ditch runs in front of the fence and a line of sandbags runs behind. There's a second fence a few miles farther out, marking the colony's boundary. To our north and south, mountains create natural barriers. The backroads remain passable, but a collapsed interstate bridge to the east acts as the opposite of a welcome mat. West of our outer gate lies the shantytown they call 'Purgatory,' and beyond that is Hell: a wasteland inhabited by rovers and roamers and creatures from Mulder's old files.

 

"Am I 'your woman' the way she's 'their woman'?" I ask Skinner, turning my head and looking up at him. "Is that what you think?"

 

"I think I was married long enough to know to dodge that question." He guides me past a series of large tanks holding gasoline and diesel fuel. A line of vehicles is parked alongside the road, behind Skinner's black SUV. White fences that once enclosed thoroughbreds now hold grazing cattle. "But I grew up with three brothers and a little sister," Skinner adds. "I'm familiar with the power of calling 'dibs.'"

 

Lawrence North waves as he drives past, probably on his way to refuel his pick-up truck. Lawrence oversees the infrastructure of Alpha Colony above ground: the road crews, the hydro-electric plant on the river, even the commissary and school. He's about Skinner's age, with cropped brown hair gray at the temples, the tall, slim physic of a former distance runner, and the quiet, polite but watchful manner common among men in Alpha Colony. His old dog Cynthia sits in the bed of the truck, and his young wife, Amy, and her baby are in the passenger seat. Today, Amy's velour tracksuit is pale blue, and the scrunchy holding her curly brown ponytail, a light plum color. Amy's been in Alpha Colony almost a year, but I've never heard her speak. Lawrence says she does, sometimes, if they're alone. Our men rescued Amy, already pregnant, from a group of roving sadists posing as men. Before Amy's baby came, she'd sit in the truck's cab, watch Lawrence, and pet the dog. Now, in warm weather, Lawrence's dog is demoted to the back, and Amy holds the baby. Amy's pregnant again. Lawrence says if she has twins - more babies than she has arms - maybe he'll get to hold a child.

 

"They've seen Mulder," I tell Skinner. "This summer. One of the men from Missouri said he saw Mulder outside Kansas City. Actually saw him."

 

Skinner looks away, at a distant gate. "And lived to tell the tale?"

 

"Mulder's not a monster."

 

Instead of arguing, he's quiet as we walk. After a while, he takes my hand and holds it until we stop in front of one of dozens of greenhouses. "Yours, Dana." He gestures inside. "I saw the book you're reading. I thought you could try growing medicinal herbs. Valerian. Foxglove. Echinacea. Maybe poppies. The book says you can make Aspirin and grow penicillin."

 

"You and that book are optimistic. I can make Aspirin and penicillin, with the right lab equipment and supplies. I can make many common medications in a lab, but the only things I've ever successfully grown were in a Petrie dish."

 

The corner of his mouth turns up in a tired grin. "I'll help. Don't tell my nephew, but the summer after I came back from 'Nam, I grew an excellent crop of marijuana."

 

"If you're designating a greenhouse for medicinal herbs rather than food, you're telling me there's no more medication to scavenge."

 

I look inside the vast greenhouse. The upper panels are propped open, letting the autumn breeze in. An irrigation system loops along the ceiling, and the long beds of soil look dark and fertile. A stray hen pauses to look with me, but bustles back toward the coop.

 

"The Missouri group, they have morphine and antibiotics," I tell him. "They asked what I'll need to deliver a baby. To do a C-section or save a preemie if I have to. I gave them a list, and they said they'd get it. All of it. Anesthetics, opioids. Misoprostol, erythromycin. Dexamethasone. They're finding or buying medication somewhere."

 

"The Plains." He leans against the wooden doorframe. "The Badlands. We've searched every pharmacy, vet clinic, and doctor's office still standing on the East Coast. People got stung and went to the hospitals. Walter Reed, Duke: the National Guard destroyed anything rioters didn't. The bombs: the CDC is gone, DC is gone, and half of Georgia is still hot. The earthquakes, the tsunami," he lists, though I know. "The Missouri people are in The Badlands. Kansas City, Falls Colony, Little Rock: those places are out there, but sending my men west of Providence Colony is a suicide mission these days, Scully."

 

I nod and roll my shoulders, trying to ease the ache. The sunlight is warm and the autumn trees an explosion of color. The beauty seems insensitive, as if as Nature begins to heal, she ignores the last vestiges of humanity sliding into extinction. Men come and go, but the Earth abides, the Bible says.

     

My former Assistant Director takes my hand again. "The Missouri crew had a case of Johnnie Walker Black Label." He smooths some stray strands of my hair and tucks them behind my ear. My hair is pulled back in a long ponytail, or at least it was yesterday. "Since we've rejoined 1923, technology-wise, I'm thinking of a shower, a drink, and a nap." His finger trails down my jaw. "Are you, by chance, free for an 8:45 AM drink, Dr. Scully?"

 

"Is Mulder listening?" I ask quietly enough the men working nearby can't hear.

 

"No. I tell you if he listens." Skinner speaks with a calmness I doubt is genuine. "If I'm participating in a psychic threesome I didn't sign up for. You're outraged for the Missouri woman, Scully, yet you still find Mulder in my head, in my bed, perfectly acceptable?"

 

"It's my bed."

 

"It's in my bunker," he reminds me in the same equable tone. "In the colony I lead. Besides, Fox Mulder wasn't listening to me last month, or either time in August, or after the fireworks on July fourth. I'm not the profiler or the medical doctor, but I see a pattern."

 

I examine my tennis shoes. The shoes are new, and I have several pairs, brought in by our foragers. I have scrubs and blue jeans and wool sweaters. The underclothes and feminine toiletries the men choose tend toward high-end. I imagine Brewster's foragers moving in formation through some dark, empty Nordstrom, holding rifles at the ready as one of them picks through the artifacts of a dead society in search of a 34B bra and size 6 Nikes. Captain Houston's traders prioritize supplies for my clinic. The fuel they bring back from Ashland's refinery powers the generators that run my lab and medical equipment. Like Skinner says, if I want it and it still exists, I get it.

 

The foragers and traders bring back other things: a bottle of the same perfume their girlfriend wore or the type of diamond tennis bracelet they gave their wife for their anniversary. Sometimes I hear the story: the first date, the trip to Rio, the last kiss goodbye. Most of the time, though, I find a pretty dress or silk scarf amidst a box of gauze and rubbing alcohol. A cashmere bathrobe in with the long underwear and antibiotics. Cosmetic cases and gourmet vegetarian cookbooks. Useless flotsam they want to give a woman, even if I'm not the woman they loved.

 

"It's not the same world, Dana. Are you 'mine'?" Skinner worries his mouth. "Yes. You're mine. In part because, if you're not mine, you'll quickly be someone else's. I promised Mulder I'd keep you safe, and I will. Whatever it takes. Morally reprehensible or not. Whether you're my friend or my colony's doctor or a pretty woman sharing my bed, yes, you're mine. Dibs. I won't feel guilty about enjoying any consensual benefits of that arrangement. Are you asking if I love you? Would flowers and a Hallmark card make this acceptable to you?"

 

I know how ridiculous this discussion is. What a moot point. It's not the same world. I've seen glimpses of the creatures outside our gates: the eyes in the trees, the shimmering human forms. I've seen the work of human monsters: men who were bludgeoned to death by rovers for their boots and cigarettes, and women sold like livestock but treated a hundred times worse. Rather than shoring up the little humanity remaining, I see it eroding down a slippery slope we keep calling 'survival.'

 

"Dana, you can't expect me to-” He inhales. “Yes. I do. Far more and for far longer than I want to admit. I don't doubt Mulder - whatever the hell he's become - loves you, too, but he's never coming back. You're holding onto rumors and conjecture. We need to grow some penicillin and get the solar panels working again. We need to live as best we can, even if it isn't pretty."

 

I look at the patchwork of autumn treetops. This is the first real autumn since Before, and the first marginally warm summer just passed. The sky is blue instead of the dreary gray that covered and cooled the planet for so long. The colonists nearly annihilated humanity, but humanity nearly annihilated our planet with nuclear bombs. Don't come back, I pray to a God whose presence I doubt. You monsters: there's nothing left here you want, so don't ever come back. If humanity survives, the alien colonists will come back, though. Our DNA holds the key to their propagation, and we have no defense. The seasons return and babies are born. Electric lights flicker on and radio signals drift into space, advertising our stubborn, pointless existence.

 

No one else seems to realize that. As our men fight over women, and master brewing beer, and harvest our first crops of wheat and corn, all we do is exist. Wait. Wait for our species to go extinct, either as our numbers dwindle or when the colonists return.

 

I want to scream it. Make a banner. Stand on a street corner and hold a sign like a crazy person. If the monsters outside our gates don't get us, the monsters from above will. There is no point.

 

Skinner steps close behind me, putting an arm across my chest and resting his chin on top of my head. Again, he surprises me with the public display of affection, though not the pose. In the photos on his desk in his office - when there used to be an FBI office and there used to be a Washington DC instead of a wasteland - he had stood the same possessive, protective way with Sharon.

 

Sharon Skinner died in a nursing home in Silver Springs, Maryland, ten months before the world ended. I lost someone, too. Fox Mulder walked out of the Greenbrier's bunker two days after the end of the world, and he never came back.

 

"I hear the Irish used to put whisky in their oatmeal." Skinner tucks my hair behind my ear again, exactly like Mulder used to.

 

"Those are the Scottish, and you have it backwards. Atholl brose is an alcoholic beverage brewed from oatmeal," I respond. "Mulder would tell you some general stopped a Highland rebellion by filling his enemy's wells with atholl brose, a legend lacking any historical documentation as well as seeming highly improbable. Regardless, the concoction sounds disgusting. We Irish put whisky in our coffee."

 

"Putting perfectly good whisky in coffee is disgusting, Scully." He leans down, putting his mouth close to my ear. "Yes, you're mine. Otherwise, what's the point? What's left? My idiot nephew and his crack babies? You're brilliant and you're beautiful and you're-" His hand moves over my shoulder as if grounding himself, but Skinner's not Mulder. He's not eloquent. Mulder would have said I was his touchstone, his North Star. I keep him centered and honest and on course, but Walter Skinner kisses my neck and repeats, "You're mine."

 

I don't ask if he's mine. He is the epitome of masculinity: strong, uncomplaining, and honorable. He possesses a visceral dominance, and he loves me. He'd kill for me. He has killed for me. But Walter Skinner isn't mine. He belongs to a dead woman.

 

Fox Mulder is mine. He'll always be my lonely guy in the basement who believes we are not alone and, like Mulder said, I'll always be his "girl."

 

I tilt my head to the side, and the sunlight warms my face. "My patient's asleep. If you can supply a hot shower and hooch, I have a refrigerator capable of supplying ice cubes. We could pretend it's not the end of the world, at least until the next crisis."

 

"Deal," he tells me, and kisses my neck again. His hips press against my backside; that's not a Glock in his pocket. "We make a good team."

 

He's right. We make a good team. But Mulder and I made a good team, too.

 

                     ***

 

The lingering soreness in my neck and shoulders came courtesy of a dead death fetishist, but my aching feet: that was my own fault and fetish.

 

I spent 1999 buying increasingly expensive shoes, theorizing at some price point I wouldn't feel like a victim of Chinese foot-binding after a day investigating Mulder's conspiracies and myths and all things that went bump in the dark. By late January 2000, my Visa card couldn't stand much more hypothesis testing. A $250 pair of high heels had parted company with my feet thirty seconds after I reached Mulder's apartment that evening.

 

The chunky Calvin Klein heels looked fabulous lying on Mulder's living room rug, though. I admired them as I lay on Mulder's couch. A pizza box sat on the coffee table. Mulder had ordered the pizza, but once the delivery man arrived, Mulder mumbled something distractedly and wandered off to his new bed instead of eating.

 

As Mulder still slept and midnight approached, I peeled off my pantyhose and told myself my mother would never know. Mulder's apartment was warm enough my sweater went too and, with a relieved sigh, I remember removing the bra I'd worn since early that morning. My wrists still bore ligature marks, but the cut on my lip had healed to the point lipstick camouflaged it.

 

I checked on Mulder and, in my blouse and skirt, returned to his couch. I dug the remote control out of the leather cushions. In the glow from the fish tank, I clicked through the cable channels. My laptop sat in my briefcase, still hungry for finished reports on alleged zombies, and a cave somehow giving hormonal teenagers supersonic speed, and Donnie Pfaster's fatal shooting.

 

I'd shot Donnie Pfaster in cold blood, yet Mulder's report, finished and filed with AD Skinner, neatly omitted that detail. Mulder's report speculated on demonic possession and attributed impossible psychic abilities to rudimentary trepanning, but sidestepped his partner committing murder. I'd killed a monster, Mulder said; he refused to judge me, though I wished someone would.

 

"I pay for all those porn channels, yet that's the best you can find on my TV?" Mulder asked from the bedroom doorway. He still wore a t-shirt and dress pants from the office; his shirt and tie hung on the coatrack. I remember the outline of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips. The stubble on his jaw and his hair flattened from sleep on one side. "I say a conspiracy to infect innocent people with an alien virus exists at the highest levels of our government. Nobody listens. Nobody cares. A man gets a BJ in the privacy of his own office, and it's still national news."

 

I glanced at the TV screen. On CNN, two women with hair high enough to entangle low-flying aircraft rehashed the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

 

"It's still national news because his office is the oval office, he's a married man, and she was a twenty-something intern." I got up and went to Mulder. I didn't need to ask if his headache had subsided; his posture remained one big flinch. Still, I said, "How's your head?"

 

"Big head or little head?" he quipped, as I should have expected. "I'm going for the Tylenol again." He stepped close and kissed my forehead. He smelled of starch and fabric softener, weariness and gun oil and library books. "It's midnight. Are you staying, partner?"

 

"I'm staying until I'm certain you don't have an aneurism."

 

"You said an aneurism wouldn't hurt," he reminded me, exactly what I was thinking.

 

Mulder looked past me, at the TV screen. He wasn't sensitive to light. His pupils were equal and reactive. His reflexes were normal. I'd checked his blood pressure and pulse a few hours ago; they’d been elevated slightly and likely due to pain. Sinus, migraine, tension, caffeine-withdrawal, concussion, dehydration, flu, meningitis, ear infection... Nothing fit. Mulder endured more neurological tests in the past months than most people do in a lifetime. His brilliant brain seemed in full working order again. His hair stopped being a source of consternation, and even the scars from whatever Cancerman and the late Diana Fowley did to him had faded.

 

All day, Mulder complained of a headache, but I found nothing medically wrong with him.

 

"It's not an artifact. If some alien artifact at the Bureau caused this headache- I'm miles from the office, and it's not any better," Mulder observed.

 

I'd made that observation, too. I put the television remote control aside and toyed with my necklace.

 

He looked to my briefcase, near his front door. "Would it make you feel better if I write your report on Pfaster?" he offered tiredly. "Come to bed. Tomorrow, I'll take my report, delete any references to the paranormal, throw in some medical jargon, and have the computer's thesaurus substitute the longest possible synonyms for any remaining normal words. Skinner will be certain you wrote it."

 

"I think perjuring yourself to an FBI panel next week is more than enough proof of your love."

 

"I can think of better approaches to proving my love than mere perjury, Agent Scully. Oxford at sixteen, Profiler of the Month three months running, and current possessor of a dank basement office and a Betty of a partner: I'm an over-achiever with a vested interest in keeping you out of prison," Mulder said. "Let me write it."

 

The gold cross on my necklace felt cool between my fingertips. "I killed a man in cold blood, Mulder."

 

He waved airily, like murder was of little consequence tonight, as he ambled to the dark kitchen in his sock feet. I heard a bottle of pills rattle and water splash in the sink. I followed him.

 

Mulder swallowed more pills than the bottle recommended and set his half-empty glass on the counter beside the open bottle of Tylenol.

 

Before I could say it, he informed me, "I don't want to go to the hospital, Scully." He put his arms around my shoulders and kissed me gently, as if still wary of my lip. "Just make sure I live long enough to save the world, make you happy, and see Super Bowl XXXIV." His hands traveled down my backside. "Wanna fool around? Take my mind off this pesky headache and a dead sociopath?"

 

"I want to get you in a CT scanner." I ran my fingers though his hair, checking the scars again.

 

"You skeptical scientist types are so kinky." He started opening the little buttons on my blouse. "Scully," he said slowly, sounding falsely, wondrously surprised. "You're not wearing anything under your shirt," he whispered. "There are breasts under here. Two of them. They're perfect."

 

"Mammalian bilateral symmetry. A secondary sex characteristic evolutionarily determined by the half-nipple rule."

 

His hand explored beneath my skirt as he whispered into my neck, "You're not wearin' any panties, either, Dr. Scully. Can you explain the evolutionary reason for that?"

 

"I'd need a mass spectrometer and your slide projector." I leaned back against Mulder's kitchen counter as he touched me. Like President Clinton, Mulder and I retained plausible deniability. We'd had sexual contact in past weeks; between monsters and mutants and ER visits, we'd not had sexual relations. I'm sure our superiors at the FBI would appreciate the fine distinction.

 

He bent low and put his mouth to my breast. I inhaled and closed my eyes. His lips and tongue and teeth felt wonderful. Worries of Mulder's pesky headache - and a dead sociopath - began to fade.

 

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly. "You still have bruises-"

 

"It's okay."

 

"What if you'd been pregnant and he'd..."

 

"I'm not," I told him.

 

"You could have been."

 

He was right; I could have been. But I wasn't.

 

A few nights ago, as Donnie Pfaster lay in the morgue and I lay in Mulder's bed rather than my own, Mulder had put his arms around me. He curled up to my back and put his leg over mine. I lay bruised and too preoccupied with my actions and God's judgment to give any thought to the fury and horror Mulder must have felt. Mulder promised he loved me, and the earthquake in my soul had subsided a few hours. As much as I was Mulder's litmus test for reality, his hypomanic passion for truth and childlike wonder at the world defied the first law of thermodynamics for me. His love and faith allowed me to be more than the sum of my parts.

 

The cellphone in my briefcase rang.

 

Mulder's mouth addressed my other breast and his hand slid between my legs. The stubble on his face rasped against my skin.

 

The cellphone continued to ring.

 

"I should answer," I said, but moved my fingers through Mulder's dark, silky hair, not my feet toward the briefcase.

 

He paused, and his breath was hot and fast inches from my wet skin.

 

"Belay that," I decided. Obligation to a small, shrill electronic device did not outweigh the draw of amorous advances from a G-man with an oral fixation. "Let it ring."

 

"I can't," he said hoarsely. "Scully-"

 

"What's-"

 

Mulder grabbed my shoulder, trying to steady himself. "Scully," he repeated, and grimaced in pain. "I-" His hand slid down my chest. He fell to his knees on his kitchen floor with his head between his palms.

 

"Mulder?" I crouched down. He pressed against his temples, wrinkling the skin with his fingertips. "Mulder, what's wrong? Look at me."

 

He looked up. Blood trickled from his nose.

 

"I'm sorry," he said, struggling to speak. "It hurts." His eyes were wide, frightened. "Scully, it hurts. It's- They're in my head, Scully."

 

"What's in your head?"

 

He cowered again. "Everyone."

 

"I'm a medical doctor, and you're going to a hospital. Right now."

 

I had to button my blouse and get my shoes. My coat. Put shoes and a coat on Mulder and grab my briefcase. Get his wallet and keys and cell phone. Our badges. Weapons. A box of Kleenex for his bloody nose. I hurried Mulder down the hall, cursed as we waited on the elevator, and hauled him outside and into my car. I had to scrape ice off the damn windshield before I could see to drive.

 

My cellphone rang again.

 

"They're in my head," Mulder kept repeating. He'd swallowed as if struggling not to cry. "They're in my head, Scully."

 

I turned the headlights on, squealed out of the parking space and sped, for lack of any other option, for the ER. Visions of padded cells filled my mind and helplessness chilled my core.

 

The cell phone rang a third time. I grabbed it and checked the screen. AD Walter Skinner. I answered.

 

Skinner had said urgently, "They're coming, Agent Scully. Do you know about Project Greek Island? At The Greenbrier? I need you to get there as fast as you can."

 

"What? Who's coming?" I asked. "Project Greek Island was decommissioned." A journalist outed the secret Cold War congressional bunker in southern West Virginia a few years earlier, and the government shut it down. "Something's wrong with Agent Mulder, sir. We're headed to the hospital."

 

"Head to the bunker, Agent Scully. I don't have a better option to offer you at this point. Get there now. It's an order."

 

I glanced at the passenger seat. Mulder sat bent forward with his head between his hands. The tendons of his hands and neck strained, and blood trickled from his ear. I was exceeding the speed limit by thirty miles an hour. "I need to get Mulder to a hospital, sir. He's- He's exhibiting the same symptoms he did in the fall, during exposure to the artifact."

 

"No hospital can help him. Where are you, Scully?"

 

"I'm in Alexandria." Two black Suburban SUV's and a limousine flew past, little presidential flags whipping on either side of the hood and emergency lights flashing silently. "What's happening?"

 

"I'm west of Charlottesville. They're coming. NORAD detected the ships. The military and the consortium are scrambling. Cheyenne Mountain's locked down. Washington's evacuating. Mount Weather's closed. I'm out of options. Get to the old bunker." Skinner paused to curse at someone, sounding as if he was also driving. "In White Sulphur Springs, a half-mile west of the hotel, look for a turn-off into the woods. I'll wait for you."

 

"They're mistaken, sir. Einstein's theory of relativity prohibits faster-than-light travel, which is necessary for interstellar-" I glanced at Mulder again. "Sir, I-" The call-waiting on my cellphone beeped. Melvin Frohike, who had his own bunker in Baltimore. I stuttered out, "I, I- We're FBI agents. We're supposed to protect the public. Support and defend the Constitution."

 

"We have to stay alive in order to do that." Skinner's voice sounded urgent. "My orders are to take cover, so I'm ordering you to do the same."

 

Mulder's cellphone rang.

 

"Do it," Mulder barked at me, and covered his head again. I heard a low moan. Muffled sobs.

 

A helicopter passed overhead, across the dark sky. I sped up to ninety miles an hour. A limousine passed me as if I stood still. The limo raced for an exit ramp, lights flashing, and disappeared from sight.

 

On the other side of the highway, a military convoy rolled toward DC.

 

I put my foot down, urging the FBI fleet sedan faster. "I'm coming," I told Skinner.

 

"Don't stop. I don't care what you have to do, get here. I'm not closing the last blast door until you're inside."

 

I nodded, closed and dropped the cellphone, and kept driving at an insane pace through the night. In the passenger seat, Mulder remained in the brace-for-a-crash position. His cellphone trilled. Mine flashed a red light, indicating Melvin Frohike left a voicemail about the end of the world.

 

The Gunmen's message said they'd started battening down their hatches. Frohike wanted to know if they should wait on us. I called them back. No cellphone answered, so I relayed my plans to their answering machine. Mulder was with me. Don't wait. Whatever was happening, good luck and God bless.

 

I passed Centreville. I stopped for gasoline in Front Royal. I tried to call my mother, who was visiting Charlie and had her cellphone turned off. Charlie didn't answer; I presumed he was in route to Naval Station Norfolk. Bill was deployed overseas. We passed Harrisburg and Staunton, with both cities still sleeping peacefully through the January night. In Lexington, my dashboard clock read after 2:00AM as I turned west. Doing warp speed, I switched on the dome light and checked the map. I passed more military convoys, and another silent government motorcade passed me.

 

The DJ on the radio read a news report about unusual swarms of bees in Chicago, in San Diego, and in Dallas. Killer bees had attacked as far north as Boston. The authorities urged caution. Stay indoors, the DJ said. I looked up and through the windshield. In the cold, clear night sky, I remember seeing stars. Orion and Taurus and Andromeda minding their own business.

 

Looking at Cassiopeia would have involved looking back.

 

Mulder curled in the passenger seat, staring at me. He flinched as touched his arm. "They're here," he whimpered, sounding petrified. "Scully, they're here. Get them out of my head."

 

Not knowing what else to do, I kept driving, my tires eating away miles of blacktop. By West Virginia, Mulder stopped whimpering and appeared catatonic.

 

I exited the highway so fast my tires squealed through a stop sign. I tried to call Skinner again. He didn't answer.

 

The radio broadcast became static. I spun the dial. Every station was static.

 

A few rooms in The Greenbrier Resort’s hotel were lit up, and limos and Mercedes sedans streamed toward the highway. Guests wealthy enough to have some connection to Washington, some inside knowledge, fled.

 

I passed the hotel's main entrance and followed the country road. An expensive horse trailer parked on the berm, in front of a white fence. A man in a tuxedo and a woman in a silk bathrobe persuaded a skittish horse into the trailer. The woman let go of the horse's halter to swat away a flying insect.

 

Trees flanked the winding road. I watched the odometer, but the hotel grounds were vast. Gravel and dirt roads branched off everywhere. My dashboard clock edged toward three in the morning.

 

I spoke, but Mulder didn't respond. Not even a moan or whimper.

 

Exactly half a mile past the main gate, I spotted a large black SUV parked across a side road. I saw other cars parked farther down the main road, but the SUV had Maryland plates and a Semper Fi sticker. The side road forked into three gravel paths; the SUV blocked access to two. Making an educated guess, I turned onto the narrow third road. My sedan's tires crunched on the gravel. Tree branches brushed the sides of the car. Two hundred feet into the trees, the road ended. My headlights illuminated a metal wall and a small silver door with a 'High Voltage' sign on it. Cement walls flanked the door and merged into the mountain.

 

As I cursed and started to shift into reverse, my cellphone screen read 'AD Walter Skinner.' Before I could answer, the caller stepped into one of my headlight beams, holding a cellphone to his ear. A dark-haired teenage boy I didn't recognize trotted after him like a nervous puppy. Other men clustered in the shadows.

 

Skinner slid his phone into his pants pocket and hurried toward my car.

 

I shoved the gearshift into park. "Mulder, we're here."

 

Mulder didn't move.

 

I must not have opened my door fast enough, because Skinner opened it for me. "Let's go, Agent Scully." Skinner looked like he wanted to pull me from behind the wheel.

 

I grabbed my briefcase and cellphone, got out, and told Skinner, "Help me with Mulder, sir."

 

Skinner rounded the car and pulled Mulder from the passenger seat less-than-gently. He slung Mulder's arm around his shoulder. I took Mulder's other arm and helped as Mulder stumbled forward. The teenage boy stood in front of the 'High Voltage' wall and stared at us.

 

A millimeter of snow covered the ground. Designer high heels and a skirt now seemed a poor fashion choice. My car engine remained running. The headlights glowed yellow in the darkness.

 

Mulder's nose bled again. His feet stopped moving. "Give him here," Skinner requested. With a grunt, he hoisted Mulder over his shoulder and carried him toward the metal wall. "Dmitry, move." Skinner gave the teenage boy a shove. "Now. Get inside."

 

To my astonishment, the teenager slipped around the edge of the metal wall and into the mountain. It wasn't a wall. It was a huge door. The bunker's blast door.

 

Four men besides Skinner followed Dmitry into the bunker, but two remained outside. I recognized the handsome Indian man as Ahsan Moovera, from Quantico, but I couldn't place the other middle-aged man. One unfamiliar man held a cellphone to his ear, watching the road behind me anxiously.

 

The sky flashed, as if the midday summer sun came on in the middle of the night. I turned to look, and I remember seeing a second flash.

 

In the brightness, I saw a ship overhead, so huge it spanned the horizon. The same type of ship I witnessed rise from the ice in Antarctica, though, back then, I assumed hypothermia and dehydration clouded my judgment.

 

Everything I knew of science, of the universe, of God changed in that moment.

 

As I stood staring at the sky, my cellphone rang. In a daze, moving on muscle memory, I fumbled in my briefcase.

 

A hand grabbed my wrist. Skinner yelled, "Move," and pulled me toward the bunker. "Moo, Andy - Everybody inside."

 

The screen on my cellphone read 'Mom.'

 

Ahsan Moovera disappeared into the dark bunker.

 

"She's coming." I registered Andy's voice like a distant car alarm: not applicable to me. "She's almost here."

 

The Assistant Director's voice responded, "It's too late, Andy." An arm went around my waist, hauling me backward.

 

"She's coming. You're not closing the door, Walt." Andy reached beneath his coat, as if for a holster.

 

My cellphone kept ringing. The ship whispered to me in a million high-pitched voices. The vast expanse of metal sang seductively, luring me with an odd, alien siren song. A parent welcoming a weary child home or a pilgrim sighting the end of a journey. I felt a magnetic pull forward, and Skinner's stubborn arm holding me back.

 

"You're not-" Andy's voice repeated from far, far away.

 

Skinner's Glock fired. Andy fell back, through the headlight beams and to the snow-covered gravel on the ground. My AD pulled me away from the light and the ship and into a low, dark, tunnel. I saw Mulder slumped against a cement wall. I saw the dark-haired teenager. I saw Ahsan Moovera from Quantico, and the other men. The blast door swung shut, blocking out the light. Twenty-five tons of steel crashed closed with a dull finality. I heard someone spin a wheel and tumblers fall into place.

 

My cellphone stopped ringing. The alien ship stopped singing. The sounds from the outside world stopped. We never tried to fight the future. Mulder, Skinner, Dmitry, and a handful of men: we locked ourselves in a cold, pitch-black old bunker. Everyone else - every innocent person who didn't answer their phone that night or who didn't drive fast enough - we locked out.

 

                     ***

 

Mulder, through some reactivated vestigial sense or ancient viral remnant I couldn't begin to explain, telepathically heard an alien life form. I could no longer refute that. That January morning in the bunker, though, I could practically read peoples' minds too.

 

We sat inside the blast door, in the dark, our backs to the wall and bottoms on the cold floor. Silently lined up against the cement wall, as if waiting for some signal before we moved.

 

Everyone had someone outside the bunker. I almost heard the men mentally going through their list of family members, friends and coworkers, checking off all those who would die while they, perhaps, lived.

 

'O crassa ingenia. O caecos coeli spectators,' the astronomer Tycho Brahe wrote in 1572, when his contemporaries dismissed his observation of a supernova in Cassiopeia. 'Oh fools. Oh, blind watchers of the sky.' Half a millennium ago, Brahe pitied those who looked but did not see the true order of the heavens.

 

A blue watch dial glowed for a second. Moovera's voice said with an Indian accent, "3:54," for no reason I could discern.

 

Ahsan Moovera had been my firearms instructor at Quantico, and Mulder's as well. I remembered Moovera as precise, patient, and excellent at his job. Quick to open doors and make small talk about golf and cars and American football. He looked like a middle-aged accountant, if your accountant competed in triathlons and worked his way through college as a male model. Beneath the handsome facade, neat black hair, and smooth-as-glass demeanor lived something dangerous, though. Something difficult to quantify, yet easily sensed: the liquidity of conscience valued in certain government agencies. The genetic disposition of a sociopath raised without the cruelty and hate that nurtures evil. Rumor had it Ahsan Moovera was a sniper in the Indo-Pakistani War before immigrating to kill for the US in Cambodia and Lebanon. Mulder called Moovera the deadliest man alive, and I trusted Mulder's judgment.

 

"4:03," Moovera informed us next.

 

The white screen of a cellphone lit up. The teenager with Skinner stared at the screen, his face looking perplexed. "Uncle Walter, I don't have cell service."

 

"You're underground," Skinner's voice answered irritably. "Turn it off, Dmitry."

 

"What if someone calls? What if my mom calls?"

 

Skinner didn't answer.

 

Mulder lay with his head on my lap, either sleeping or unconscious. His pulse was strong, his breaths calm and even, and I couldn't feel his ears or nose bleeding anymore.

 

The kid's cellphone remained on as he adjusted the antenna and tried holding the phone higher. Lower. Closer to the blast door.

 

Far down the hall, flashlight beams moved toward us from the belly of the mountain. Footsteps echoed, and a male voice called, "Is it closed?"

 

"The west door's closed and locked," Skinner answered. He stood, and his flashlight switched on.

 

I had a flashlight: in the car. I had a medical kit and sensible shoes and even an overnight bag with panties and a bra in it. Outside. I had two brothers and my mother and nephews, and a lifetime of friends and neighbors and coworkers. Outside.

 

The approaching voice said, "We have 36 hours of air unless we can get the ventilation system going."

 

Moovera had a flashlight, as well. He got to his feet.

 

The tunnel was long and low, and lined with boxes of food; the expiration dates on the boxes passed years ago. Grey pipes hung from the ceiling.

 

Three men approached: one wearing a dirty chef's outfit, and two in the hotel's green uniform. A flashlight beam lingered on Mulder's bloody face. "Is he hurt? There's a medical clinic."

 

"I'm a medical doctor." I remained certain of that fact. Everything else - the laws of science, the will of God - seemed open for debate. "Let's get him to the clinic."

 

Skinner picked up Mulder. The AD’s sweatshirt smelled of gunpowder. Skinner did what he had to do, I'd told myself. Mulder didn't judge me for killing Pfaster, and I didn't judge Skinner for killing poor Andy, whoever poor Andy had been.

 

The dark, silent bunker smelled like a battleship - all metal and old paint - and was furnished in the same Spartan manner. We passed an armory stripped of everything except a few riot helmets. I saw showers and a decontamination area. The dormitory still had blankets and pillows on the bunk beds, with each bed wrapped with plastic to preserve it. The government no longer maintained the bunker, but the removal of the facility's supplies had been performed with the same level of competency the US government performed many tasks.

 

Moovera peeled off at the power plant, and the other men followed him. Skinner carried Mulder and stayed with me.

 

In the medical clinic, swabs and gauze pads littered the floor. I found an old ventilator and a few other pieces of equipment likely deemed too out-of-date to bother moving. Three bottles of sterile saline, a penlight, and two bottles of rubbing alcohol sat on a counter. An overturned tray of #15 scalpels and Adson's forceps got left behind as well, as if Hansel and Gretel left a trail of debridement materials to find their way back.

 

Forgoing the vast medical care I could provide with contaminated swabs, a penlight, and allegedly sterile saline, we put Mulder in an old hospital bed and covered him with blankets. Skinner left, returned with a can of lit Sterno, and left again. The little metal can burned an eerie blue in the vast blackness.

 

Using the penlight, I checked Mulder's nose and ears. I cleaned his face with alcohol and some gauze. He grimaced, and his eyes moved rapidly beneath his eyelids as he dreamed. I shined the penlight on Mulder's watch. The dial reported five AM approached.

 

I heard metal clanking from the power plant. The air remained stale, and the bunker cold and dark. I held Mulder's hand, anchoring myself. I wished for comfortable shoes and long pants and one last chance to talk to my mother.

 

A flashlight beam and the smell of fresh coffee entered the clinic. Skinner's voice asked, "How is he?"

 

"Resting," I answered. I hadn't bothered letting go of Mulder's hand. Concealing my romantic relationship with my partner no longer seemed vital as the heavens rained death.

 

If Skinner noticed our hands, he didn't comment. He set a cup of coffee near me, pulled an old chair beside the hospital bed, and his flashlight switched off. Amidst an alien apocalypse, as we hid in a decommissioned government bunker, lacking electricity and rapidly burning though our breathable air, an Assistant Director of the FBI sat at Mulder's bedside with me, helping me do nothing to help Mulder.

 

I listened to Mulder's breathing as the minutes crawled past.

 

After an eon, Skinner said, "We came here for our wedding anniversary, after the article about the bunker hit the papers. The hotel had all the bunker doors closed, but I flashed my badge and got the general manager to let us look around inside. A giant secret bunker hidden in plain sight for forty years: I remember telling her 'Fox Mulder would love this place.'"

 

'Her' and 'us' and 'we' - Skinner used pronouns the way soldiers used body armor. To keep living. I didn't know exactly when Sharon Skinner died, only that she had. She never regained consciousness after the car accident, the FBI rumor mill said, and after ages on life support, succumbed to pneumonia.

 

After another minute, Skinner continued, "The Bureau shrink suggested I stop sitting at home, alone, drinking Scotch and playing Willie Nelson songs. My sister Helena sent Dmitry down from Philly. I thought I'd take the kid on a road trip. Do the father-figure thing, since Helena married an overgrown twelve-year-old with a trust fund. Moovera finished restoring his Corvette, so I said I'd drive sweep, bring the bags. Dmitry could visit some colleges, and I'd look up old friends..." He sighed defeatedly. "We made it as far as the University of Virginia before Dmitry was smoking marijuana on Andy's balcony and your partner turned out to be right about alien colonization all along."

 

"Crazy?" Mulder asked softly, and his hand squeezed mine.

 

Skinner and I both echoed, "Crazy?"

 

I reached for the penlight. The Assistant Director's flashlight switched on. Mulder's eyes remained closed, but I detected a hint of amusement on his face.

 

"After Diana left, I liked Willie Nelson's _Crazy_." Mulder hummed a few bars of the old Patsy Cline song. "And I'm crazy for loving you. A six-pack of Michelob, that song on the record player, and a stack of X-files, every night for months."

 

Skinner cleared his throat. " _Always on My Mind._ "

 

Mulder shook his head. "The King did _Always on My Mind_ so much better. You've got the wrong cover. That's why it's not working."

 

"It worked for you?"

 

"No." Mulder opened his eyes. "I got a very-plausibly-hot new partner. I got to chase monsters and UFO's every day with Dr. Skeptical Genius-McNice Form. Somehow the record started collecting dust." He sniffed. "It smells like a head shop in here. Skinner, are you tokin' up with my girl?"

 

As I checked Mulder's eyes and ears, the scent of burning rope drifted into the clinic. Skinner's flashlight beam left Mulder's bed and instead lit the hallway. "If the aliens don't get him first, I'm gonna kill Helena's idiot kid," Skinner announced and, with another sigh, heaved himself from the chair. Ten seconds later, sneakers scrambled in the hallway. The marijuana smell dissipated but the angry voices continued for some time.

 

Mulder's hand took mine again. "You're in an old, underground bunker in southern West Virginia," I told him. "Skinner called and told me to come, and I saw the ship. I saw the ship from Antarctica, Mulder. Bees are swarming, and before Skinner closed the bunker door, I saw-"

 

"I know." Mulder seemed strangely calm, given the circumstances. Holding his hand, the calmness transferred to me. "Do you ever get the feeling we can't catch a break, Scully? The entire universe is against us ever getting it on?"

 

"The thought has occurred to me." I lay down on the hospital bed and laid my head against his chest. He smelled of blood and sweat, but the heat from his body radiated to my cheek. "Dr. Skeptical Genius-McNice Form? Mulder, I appreciate the compliment, but never, ever refer to me as your 'girl' again."

 

"Like it or not, you'll always be my girl, Scully." In the darkness, he sounded certain of it. "Like I'll always be your guy. The lonely guy in the basement who believes we are not alone."

 

I hadn't argued because I hadn't wanted to.

 

"I hear them," he told me. "Them. It's quieter, but they're still in my head. All the same thought. A hive mind, like the Borg on Star Trek."

 

"Can you hear what's happening outside? What about the resistance? You said there were factions within-"

 

His pillow rustled as he shook his head. "The ships are in place. Purity has spread as expected. Harvest will begin soon, before the hosts damage themselves." His voice was oddly flat. "Wide-scale damage to incubating hosts is unacceptable."

 

"Mulder?" I said hesitantly.

 

"That's what they're thinking, Scully." He stroked my hair and sounded like Mulder again. "I'm sorry."

 

"You didn't do this."

 

"I didn't stop it, either," Mulder pointed out. "The truth I fought so long to discover, sacrificed to make known- I got distracted, and everything I wanted to prevent is happening right now, while I'm immune to the virus and snug as a bug."

 

I opened my mouth only to close it again. I was the distraction. He hadn't said it, but the truth remained. On his own, Mulder would have chased the white whale day and night until he caught it or it killed him. But Mulder wanted me, and I wanted normal things. A baby. A life. A future. With him.

 

The silence piled up between us, spreading out into the dark corners. My coffee grew cold.

 

"Skinner shot a man who tried to keep us from closing the bunker," I said for no reason except a need to speak. "Andy."

 

"Andy Bennett," Mulder supplied. "A college roommate. Divorced, no kids. Vietnam vet, DOJ lawyer, and model train enthusiast. They were playing poker at Andy's place in Charlottesville last night. Moovera doesn't drink or gamble, but Skinner does and Skinner was winning."

 

"How can you know that?"

 

"Skinner knows it," Mulder said. "If someone had to balk at closing the door, Andy Bennett, who spent thirty years in a courtroom, was better than Ahsan Moovera. Skinner went through Quantico with 'Moo.' Skinner knows if he had to out-draw Moovera, we'd all be dead right now."

 

"Mulder, are you telling me you can read AD Skinner's mind?" I raised my head and stared at his face in the dim blue light from the Sterno can. Mulder seemed nonplussed. "How?"

 

"I hear him." He looked at me with those sleepy hazel eyes. "I also know Skinner hates model trains, and he's noted your lack of undergarments."

 

A pressure built inside my head. Not a headache, exactly, but a diffuse, distracting pressure. Intracranial hypertension, or what I imagined intracranial hypertension felt like. With the pressure came the sense of being surveilled. Accompanied. Not being alone with my thoughts.

 

I'd blinked. Taken a breath, trying to clear my head. Neither the pressure nor the odd presence lessened.

 

"Wow," Mulder said wondrously. His voice sounded distant, but I felt his presence inside me the way I'd felt the spaceship. "It's like a medical textbook, a thesaurus, and a physics lecture teamed up to write a skeptical sonnet."

 

"What?"

 

"I can hear you, Scully."

 

                     ***

 

Hear you, Scully.

 

The male voice repeats, "Here, Dr. Scully."

 

I raise my head from the counter and open my eyes as Byers' voice says again, "Prichard said you were in here, Dr. Scully."

 

John Byers stands in my lab, the familiar and encyclopedic confluence of paranoia and earnest from Before. He still has the neat beard and short haircut, but Byers stopped wearing wingtips and a three-piece suit as a concession to the alien apocalypse. Instead, he wears yellow coveralls, like a telephone lineman, with the neck fastened closed and a collection of little pliers and wire-cutters and other tools arranged neatly in his breast pocket. He's part of the electrical maintenance crew in Alpha Colony, and he won't wear a gun in a holster, even though Skinner ordered him to. Instead, Byers has a gun in a holster he moves from place to place, laying it safely on a rock or shelf or wherever he works.

 

Currently, Byers has a towel wrapped around one hand and the revolver in a belt holster tucked under his arm. "I need some assistance, Dr. Scully."

 

"As long as it's medical, not horticultural assistance," I tell him, and get up from the metal stool. "What happened to your hand?"

 

"I cut it."

 

His lack of SAT vocabulary words surprises me, but he offers his wounded hand again, as if in proof.

 

Since cleaning and stitching up his hand will require more than a microscope, an old autoclave, and an Erlenmeyer flask, I escort him to the exam room and have him sit on the table while I wash my hands. He brings the little revolver and lays it carefully beside him.

 

"Are you making progress fixing the solar grid?" I ask, more for idle conversation than anything else.

 

I expect a ten-minute diatribe on the hazards of small woodland creatures to photovoltaic power systems, but Byers nods. The grid is a huge project: a hillside of scavenged solar panels, enough to power the bunker without the diesel generators. "We'll have it back online by tomorrow morning."

 

Byers has a side project: a radio tower. He has a hand-crank ham radio, but he wants a tower broadcasting and receiving messages from hundreds of miles. Skinner hasn't refused, but a radio tower takes a distant second to powering the bunker. Get the solar grid working again and Byers can resume work on the radio tower. On his own time, Skinner stipulated.

 

For now, Byers has a wall in the dining hall with a huge map of North America and lists of names. Every person alive in Alpha Colony and New Richmond and Norfolk Inland and Ashland and Providence Colony has their name listed in green. A face-to-face sighting. Every person who's passed through Alpha Colony or nearby is also green; Lynn, Blond Leo, Cajun Jeff, and Chico Joe's names will soon be added to the wall, with a string linking them to Missouri, October 2004. Linked to the green names, in yellow, will be anyone they've encountered After: Fox Mulder, outside Kansas City, April 2004 and Colin Fox, Missouri, October 2004. The dead are red: a category growing far quicker than the others. Black dots punctuate the map. Not names, but black dots linked to descriptions: 'pale man-like thing; March 2000' and 'male with bat-like face; August 2005' and 'shimmery human forms in trees; April 2002.' The black dots mark creatures not genetically human enough to gestate Purity.

 

By all rights, my name should be black. So should Mulder's. So should a handful of Marines in Alpha Colony vaccinated against the virus.

 

The names cluster along the East Coast, but a few green names link to hundreds of yellow names in Colorado and Northern California and Oregon. The survivors on the West Coast. In between, on the plains, Byers has fifty names and a dot-to-dot of black descriptions. It's not only Byers gathering the data; Brewster's foraging team and Houston's traders bring back lists of green and yellow names and locations. If the men encounter a corpse with ID on it, that name goes up in red. If the body's nameless, he'll list a description. Byers has a database on a computer, but he still keeps the dining hall wall so anyone in Alpha Colony can check.

 

Melvin Frohike and Richard Langly's names are linked to Baltimore and written in red ink. February 2000. They survived colonization and the bombs and quakes, like so many, to perish in the frozen aftermath. John Byers never explained what happened to The Gunmen. He appeared in White Sulphur Springs a year After, on foot, malnourished and dehydrated and hypothermic, alone.

 

John Byers' name is green, and linked to Baltimore February 2000, and Ellicot City and Columbia, MD, March 2000. His path, during a winter colder than any in human history, continues through rural Maryland, Silver Springs, and west to Bethesda. Except for survivors in Mount Weather, after each city, in Byers' neat script, is written in yellow 'No one.'

  

His web of people and people sightings creates a visual census of doomsday survivors. Our only census and representing hours of labor. He interviews every visitor and keeps up with the foragers' and traders' lists. He goes to the outer gates and asks people outside the fence. Every chance Byers gets, he's on top of a mountain with his two-way hand-crank ham radio, broadcasting and listening. Anyone within fifty miles of the bunker who answers, their name gets added to the wall in green: a direct, if not face-to-face, contact.

 

I stare at the wall, sometimes, scanning for new names, and I'm not the only one. Moovera still checks every day. Everyone prays for a name to appear in green or yellow out there, in the wasteland. We tell ourselves our loved ones survived in a cave or a mine or deep in some swamp or high on some mountain. Out of six billion people a few years ago, we aren't the only one left now.

 

Mulder was sighted near Topeka July 2002, and in Idaho Falls September 2003. He's in the Badlands, moving around. Never near Alpha Colony - not with CGB Spender, and not with a nameless pregnant woman. His name is always yellow: where someone claimed to see him months or years ago. I've wondered if those sightings are even valid. Perhaps Fox Mulder has achieved mythical status, and people see him the way they once saw Elvis in a convenience store.

 

"Dr. Scully," Byers says, bringing my focus back to the fresh cut on his palm. "Are you all right?" He frowns. "You smell like alcohol."

 

"I'm fine." I did breathe through my nose, though. "I'm sure you know this, but the Missouri group this morning: they'd seen Mulder."

 

"Yes. I'll update the map." He glances around the little examination room. "Is Director Skinner here?"

 

"He's sleeping. He worked on the generators all night," I say, though I know Byers knows. He probably also knows Skinner is asleep in my bedroom, in the old dental office a few doors down. "How exactly did you cut your hand?"

 

"With a knife." Byers answers so simply it's again suspicious.

 

The straight, neat line across his left palm looks as if he cut himself with a dagger to swear a blood oath. It doesn’t need stitches. John Byers isn't the most rough and tumble of men, but I'm surprised he hiked down the mountain in the middle of the day to have me clean a glorified paper cut.

 

I start checking him for signs of shock. Some injury he isn't reporting.

 

"Are you aware the Director limits access to you, Dr. Scully?" he asks quietly. "Prichard would stop me if I tried to walk into your clinic."

 

I am aware. I'm responsible for the health of every person in Alpha Colony. I can't have lonely men under my feet all day, inventing reasons to talk to me. I'm not a prisoner, though. I usually eat with the men and visit the rec area. I shower. I pray, for all the good it does me. I walk down the hall. I walk outside and into town. I make house calls. I agree; Bettie Paige is a little much at breakfast, but I joined the men in the auditorium two nights ago. I watched _The Bridge on the River Kwai_ with a room of former soldiers who critiqued every detonation technique and military anachronism, including the Japanese soldiers carrying British rifles. Skinner's right; this is Alpha Colony, population middle-aged male.

 

I look at Byers again, and at his hand. "Did you cut yourself to get in here?" I ask quietly, "Why?" and pray he isn't about to swear his love for me.

 

In the softest audible voice, he answers, "Last night, I made my usual broadcast. 'This is John Byers of Alpha Colony. Anyone hearing this message, please respond.'"

 

I hold a swab in mid-air as I nod.

 

"A man identifying himself as Fox Mulder responded, Dr. Scully. It was Agent Mulder, or at least someone playing a recording of him. I recognized the voice."

 

The swab continues to hover. My hand starts to shake. "Oh my God. Did Mulder say where he was?"

 

"No. I broadcast this morning, but he didn't answer. I'll try again tonight."

 

Mulder's out there, I tell myself. He could be injured, sick. "What did Mulder say? Can you triangulate his location?"

 

"Not with the equipment I have. Radio direction finding requires a dipole or, ideally, a Yagi antenna and-"

 

I gesture impatiently with my swab for him to stop talking. "Did you tell Skinner?"

 

Byers nods. "Of course. Last night. Mulder had a message for Director Skinner." He glances at the doorway again. "I have been instructed to link Fox Mulder's name to the Missouri group, in yellow. Fox Mulder, outside Kansas City, April 2004."

 

"Why?"

 

Byers shakes his head. He doesn't know.

 

A door opens nearby: the old dental office.

 

Byers and I stare at each other, wide-eyed. I tell myself Byers has conjured a conspiracy. Like old times. There's some perfectly reasonable explanation for Skinner concealing the truth about Mulder from me. Walter Skinner saved my life, and not once in five years has he lied to me.

 

Skinner knew last night. He knew this morning. He knew when he took me to bed. For days, Skinner's been edgier and more guarded than usual. I wonder how long Mulder's been out there.

 

I wonder if the Missouri group saw Mulder outside Kansas City at all, or if a lie was part of the price of admission to see me.

 

"Mulder had a message for you too, Agent Scully," Byers tells me softly. "You and Director Skinner. Mulder said 'Tell Skinner and Scully I need them.'"

 

"He needs us for what purpose?"

 

John Byers shakes his head again. "Agent Mulder only said he needs you."

 

I hold my breath, waiting for some follow-up or context.

 

All Byers says is, "The Director instructed me not to tell you. If I breathe one word, I'm out of Alpha Colony. I can't- I can't be out there again, Agent Scully."

 

I look at Byers' little revolver on the exam table. Byers' eyes follow mine. For a few seconds, I can't move.

 

I mouth "Go," at him. Byers grabs the revolver and the bloody towel, and lurches off the table.

 

By the time Skinner sticks his head in the exam room to check on me, I'm putting the unused swabs back in their container, and John Byers' footsteps fade down the west tunnel, toward the October afternoon sun.

 

                     ***

 

As the alien plague spread, in a lower bunk, in the dim corner of one of the old bunker's eighteen dormitories intended to house our elected leaders, Mulder explored me like a new country.

 

Moovera and Skinner got one old generator running, but Mulder left the dorm's lights off. Someone mentioned cooking breakfast in the kitchen, but Mulder and I didn't go eat. Keeping him in the medical clinic seemed pointless. Many things I once gave great weight and let determine my course in life seemed pointless. Death, whether it multiplied among my cells or fell from the sky, brings clarity. It factored life into its simplest components: love, faith, purpose. Each moment ripens to peak sweetness, beautiful and dangerous and precious, like Mulder, and there wasn't one second or thought to waste. My beautiful, precious, dangerous Mulder: he and I lay on the too-short mattress together, beneath a rough sheet and an old blanket, nude, while the world outside the bunker ended. Already, Mulder seemed different, and already, I hadn't cared.

 

As if in a daze, I nodded consent and closed my eyes.

 

He plotted points on my body, listening to my sensations and gathering data. How I felt as his mouth touched my earlobe, my neck, my breast, and on the scar on my abdomen. He touched between my legs, caressed my backside. His breath quickened along with mine. One finger inside me. Two. A keen observer of human behavior, Mulder found exactly what made my thighs quake and my breathing grow ragged.

 

"I feel it," he told me, as enthralled with this new sense as he'd be with opening a new case file on some lake monster.

 

I hadn't cared how he felt my sensations and shared my thoughts. Or what happened to my volition to do anything except lie back and let him love me. Science - the impossibility of telepathy given human neurology and quantum physics - seemed irrelevant. As Mulder listened to me, touched me, I felt a hypnotic bliss, a wonderful calmness. A tide carried me far away, and my will no longer seemed fully my own. Minutes or hours or days could have passed; I had no constant except him.

 

Mulder gasped and moved back, startling me. The pressure of his presence left my head, swirling away like water down a drain. The euphoric calm vanished, as well. A dam broke in my hindbrain, and I felt a flood of fear and weariness. In the void, my thoughts cleared.

 

I sat up, reaching for him. "What is it?" I whispered.

 

He looked around the cramped dorm. The empty bunk beds crowded around us like someone vastly overestimated the room's capacity.

 

"What do you hear?"

 

"Nothing. It's quiet. It's quiet," he repeated, as if unable to think of another explanation. "I was listening to you, but there's this- These-" He gestured to his temple with his open hand. "I could hear the ship. Noise in the background. People's thoughts. Fear. Not just in the bunker, but outside. All these indistinct thoughts and sensations. It all stopped, Scully."

 

"Did the ship take them? Is the ship gone?"

 

"I don't think so." He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. "A bomb. There's a mushroom cloud. The people I heard - they're gone."

 

"All of them?" We should have felt a nuclear explosion that large, even inside the bunker.

 

He shook his head, seeming pained. "Not all. I hear others out there. They hear the bees. I hear them running, hiding from the ships. Once they're infected, I hear their thoughts changing, coming in tune with the thoughts from the ships. Scully, I-" He winced and shook his head again, as if he could shake the horror away. "Shit." He pushed his palms against his temples. "I want them out of my head, Scully," he pleaded.

 

"I don't know what to-" I cupped his jaw with my palm. He stared at me, frightened, pained, helpless. "Listen to me, Mulder," I ordered. I put his trembling hand on my breast. "Touch me, and listen. Only me."

 

Mulder looked down at his hand covering my bare breast.

 

"Don't listen to them," I told him.

 

His thumb crossed my erect nipple. "Scully," he whispered, seeming far away. "Not like this."

 

"It doesn't matter."

 

"They're in my head." It sounded like a confession. The way other people said 'you're not my first,' or 'you should know I'm married.'

 

"Don't listen to them." I laid back. He moved forward, seeming entranced. "Listen to me."

 

He covered me, kissed me, skin against bare skin. The pressure in my head increased, and I let Mulder roam my mind, revel in my flesh. The kisses and caresses had a desperate edge, as if he fled ahead of the alien hive mind. His hands covered my breasts again, rough, hasty, and slid up my thighs and backside. "Scully." His voice had the same distant, desperate edge.

 

I opened my legs. He shivered as I cried out, and he thrust: a well-endowed man entering a woman whose genitals had been merely decorative for some time.

 

"Hurts," he told me, and he'd been right.

 

"Don't stop." I ran my fingers through his hair and opened my legs wider.

 

"Scully, should it-"

 

Don't stop, I thought. Block out everything else; be inside me.

 

He thrust harder, listened harder, until my head and groin ached in equal measure. His lips crossed my mouth, my throat, as his hips moved. The stubble on his face rasped against my skin like sandpaper. His hand grasped my breast, my hip, rough and primal.

 

"I love you," I heard hoarsely, in my ear. "I do. I love you, Scully."

 

"Love me," I requested, and closed my eyes. "Don't stop."

 

"Come for me," he said in three warm breaths against my neck. "Scully, come for me." He'd kissed me again, and a vortex consumed me.

 

It wasn't sweet. Or gentle. Or anything I'd imagined. Still, in deep, hard, even strokes, 'wonderful' condensed to its most basic form, flowed through me and, like a perpetual motion machine, back to Mulder. I remember him so far inside me - in my body and my thoughts - no room remained for anything else. Pleasure came in wave after wave, each spasm drawn out like copper wire and crashing like symphonic cymbals.

 

Afterward, as he lay curled up against my back, silent, breathing slowing, I still felt him inside my mind. I thought of things - of meeting him, of writing to him as I battled cancer, of Donnie Pfaster and how important that seemed yesterday - so Mulder could listen.

 

As sleep started to take me, Mulder's voice said, "The incubating hosts damaging themselves is unacceptable." The voice sounded like Mulder's, at least. The void of emotion behind the words did not. "This must stop, but-" After a second, he said less robotically, "The aliens don't understand. They need immune humans they can communicate with. Humans like me."

 

I opened my eyes. Mulder had stopped listening to my thoughts, so I had to ask aloud, "Can they find you?"

 

"Once the interference from the bomb clears, they'll resume searching."

 

I interlaced my fingers with his. "Do they know where you are?"

 

"They understand mammals pair bond. Protect each other. Mate." His hand slid up my hip and down to the valley of my waist. "They understand I'm male and you're female. A female I've come after twice, when they took you. You're my girl. Wouldn't they search for the chip in your neck and know I'll be with you? It's the end of the world. Where else would I be except with you?"

 

"Mulder-"

 

"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you didn't feel them calling you earlier, before the bomb went off?"

 

I couldn't tell Mulder he was wrong, but I thought of the scalpels in the medical clinic. The forceps and alcohol. Of having Mulder or Skinner or someone cut that chip out of my neck.

 

"No," Mulder said. "I'm not letting you do that."

 

Far down the hallway, Skinner's voice called, "Agent Scully." Hurried footsteps approached. "We need a doctor now."

 

"Go," Mulder ordered. "Be a doctor."

 

"You stay right there." I scrambled to find my skirt and blouse. My torturous shoes. My coat. "We'll figure this out."

 

Mulder remained on the lower bunk, watching me with his old-soul eyes. In retrospect, he'd already figured it out. He hadn't figured out how to tell me.

 

"I'm here," I called, once I was decent. I neared the entrance to the dormitory as Skinner reached it from the hallway. "What's happened?"

 

Skinner's eyes swept over me, and he turned away. As I followed him toward the dining hall, he explained, "One of the hotel guests says a bee stung him."

 

I hadn't known hotel guests made it into the bunker, but it made sense. People entered the bunker from the hotel and closed those doors, locking out the rest of the guests. I wouldn't have found the west door if not for Skinner. "A bee got through the bunker's ventilation system?"

 

"No, it got him earlier. Outside. He just mentioned it, and he looks like he has the flu."

 

I stopped and grabbed the sleeve of Skinner's University of Virginia sweatshirt, stopping him as well. "If he's infected with Purity, we don't have a vaccine. There's nothing I can do for him."

 

Skinner stared down at me. My face stung and my groin ached. I smoothed my hair and tucked it behind my ears. "If Mulder's correct, the virus gestates quickly," I said. "Within 12 hours in a warm climate, and less than 96 hours in a cold one."

 

"It will hatch? The alien life-form gestating inside him?"

 

I nodded. "If he's infected."

 

Skinner glanced at his wristwatch.

 

An elegant, silver-haired woman in a purple satin robe approached us. "Is she the doctor?" she asked frantically. "Are you the medical doctor?" Before I could answer, she told me, "My husband isn't allergic to beestings. What's the matter with him?"

 

The three hotel employees I'd seen earlier stood around a slim, elderly man seated in a metal chair. Perspiration beaded on his bald head. Beneath his bathrobe, the man's white t-shirt looked damp. The skin of his throat looked oddly transparent. He watched me with glassy eyes.

 

I saw Dmitry. Moovera. The other men who'd been outside the west door. Everyone, including the old man, looked to me to do something.

 

"I believe he's been infected with the same virus spreading outside. He's hosting a parasitic-"

 

"Help him," the old woman barked at me. "The FBI men said you're a doctor. Do you know who my husband is?"

 

Dead. Whoever her husband was, he was dead. If I didn't stop the creature gestating inside him, the other people in the bunker would die, too.

 

I struggled to think. In ransacking the medical clinic, I'd found some old syringes and an ancient bottle of ether. A large enough air embolism could be deadly. Sometimes. Diethyl ether sedated slowly and, provided it didn't explode, killed even slower. I'd seen ether used once as anesthesia, on an old episode of _MASH_.

 

I didn't know killing the host, at this point, killed the creature growing inside him.

 

If the bunker had an incinerator, we could burn the body.

 

I remember my mind seeming sluggish, and yearning to leave the dining hall. I'd wanted - not to return to Mulder - but to hurry down the long hallway and to the bunker's west door.

 

"Aren't you going to do something?" the old woman demanded.

 

I opened my mouth, waiting for words to come.

 

The floor beneath my feet rumbled and moved, like an earthquake. Once, with no aftershock. Another nuclear bomb, close enough to rock the bunker.

 

"Agent Scully?" Skinner's voice asked. "Dana?"

 

Something shifted beneath the old man's trachea. Perspiration dripped from his temples, yet he shivered.

 

"Dana," Skinner repeated urgently. I heard Skinner's holster unsnap.

 

A gunshot wound appeared in the center of the old man's forehead. A second bullet pierced his chest. The sounds echoed deafeningly through the bunker as the man slouched in the chair.

 

I turned, my ears ringing. Skinner's weapon remained holstered. Mulder stood behind me. Mulder wore the same suit pants, t-shirt, and dress shoes from Friday morning, and he held the pistol the FBI issued him.

 

The universe broke. My universe, at least. It came unhinged and off-track, as I stood by, a powerless carbon speck hiding beneath the surface of a pale blue dot.

 

The old woman screamed. And screamed.

 

Mulder stared at her expressionlessly. He looked tired and unshaven. Rumpled. He looked exactly like the Mulder I knew and loved, except for the two-thousand-yard stare.

 

My ears continued ringing, and my mouth still wouldn't move.

 

I hadn't seen Moovera draw, but Moovera had his weapon trained on Mulder. He and Skinner exchanged glances. Moovera lowered his revolver.

 

The ringing continued, and only dark matter existed in the void inside my head. Mulder turned away. I ran after him, out of the dining hall of horrors and down the endless cement hallway. Behind us, Moovera and Skinner's footsteps followed.

 

The old woman in the dining hall continued to scream.

 

Mulder passed the dorm and headed for the west blast door. He didn't look back, and he didn't slow down so I could catch up.

 

Each step brought me closer to the door, closer to peace, like a soul moving toward the light of Heaven. Safety and forgiveness and God's love lay on the other side of that massive steel door.

 

Mulder stopped at the expanse of gray metal. He said something to Moovera and Skinner, but I heard the ship singing. Time fell out of joint; string theory became a hopeless tangle rather than elegant, interlocking equations.

 

I remember watching the men talking; I don't remember hearing their voices, though I must have. I don't remember Mulder telling me goodbye.

 

Moovera spun the wheeled latch. Skinner grabbed me, holding me back. My screams rivaled the old woman's. I kicked and struggled. I felt Skinner's chest heaving as he prevented my escape.

 

I wasn't trying to follow Mulder; I was trying to reach the ship. Like a moth to a flame, the prospect of death didn't daunt me. Even Mulder's death. I wish I could whitewash the truth and claim I wanted out of the bunker so everyone else could live, but that wasn't the case.

 

Mulder would call what happened next 'missing time.' I remember Mulder disappearing into a swath of light. I remember the bunker door slamming closed again. Next, I remember feeling cold cement against my face. Someone sat across my backside and held my wrists behind my back.

 

The desperate need to reach the ship vanished; the ache of Mulder's absence had not. Moovera would later tell me an hour had passed; he'd checked his wristwatch.

 

"Easy, Dana," Skinner's voice told me. "It's me. Walter Skinner."

 

"Dr. Scully, can you hear us?" Moovera asked in his gently accented English. "This is Ahsan Moovera. Nod if you can hear me."

 

I nodded. I heard them.

 

"No one's trying to hurt you, Dr. Scully. We're keeping you from hurting yourself. Nod if you understand."

 

I nodded.

 

"Good. AD Skinner's going to let you up, Dr. Scully," Moovera told me.

 

I heard a pained grunt. The heavy weight left my back and the hands left my wrists. There was a tired exhalation. I rolled over and sat up. The stiffness in my back and the sweat on Skinner's forehead suggested an extended wrestling match.

 

I shook from the inside out. Everything hurt. My elbows, my back, my face, my shoulders. Between my legs, inside my soul.

 

Skinner sat back tiredly against a pallet of boxes of powdered eggs. The bunker door was closed. Skinner's glasses were missing. "Sorry, Dana, but we couldn't let you out the door."

 

I stared at him.

 

"Are you okay?" Skinner squinted at me. He retrieved his glasses from atop the boxes and put them on. "Jesus. Scully?"

 

Moovera also watched me. Farther down the dim tunnel, I saw young Dmitry watching worriedly, as well. A single dusty bulb glowed overhead, inside a gray metal cage.

 

"Get her a blanket," Skinner ordered, and Dmitry trotted away.

 

Still shaking, I touched the tiny raised bump on the back of my neck. I felt the chip, but I didn't feel the ships calling me. That meant one thing. The aliens didn't need to find me; they'd found Mulder.

 

I ran a hand over my stiff neck again, at first because my neck ached, but also a second time. The delicate chain wasn't there. "My cross."

 

My mother gave me that necklace. My mother who would never answer her cell phone again. The necklace Mulder kept for me during my abduction. The one he found in Antarctica.

 

"What's wrong?" Skinner asked, and I told him.

 

Kneeling on the frigid cement, I ran my hands over the floor. Moovera's flashlight came on and made precise, forensic laps back and forth, revealing spider webs and dead leaves at the edges of the hall. Skinner found the dust beneath the old pallets of food and the unbroken cocoons of creatures never born. I shivered as I patted down my clothing and ran my fingers through my hair. Again and again. Like the necklace might reappear if I checked enough times.

 

Skinner asked the obvious question. "Are you sure you wore it in here?"

 

No, I hadn't been sure. Logically, I probably lost it in Mulder's apartment, or as I'd manhandled him into my car. It could have been in the dormitory bed Mulder and I shared, or the dining hall, but it hadn't been. Six weeks later, we would open the bunker to a ruined, frozen world, and my cross wouldn't be outside the west door or in my car.

 

I thought Mulder took the delicate cross with him. He took the strength of my beliefs and went to face Armageddon.

 

Dmitry returned with a blanket, and after a few minutes, Skinner steered me to the medical clinic in case I required contaminated swabs or ether. A cup of coffee appeared.

 

"She's in shock," Moovera informed Skinner, sounding like every Indian TV ER doctor ever.

 

I remember thinking Ahsan Moovera's diagnosis was correct. Attacked by a death fetishist, caught amid an alien apocalypse, and watching Mulder sacrifice himself to save me: shock seemed the appropriate response.

 

I lay on the same hospital bed we'd put Mulder in yesterday, and Skinner sat nearby. He told Moovera to take Dmitry and look for my necklace. I think Skinner hadn't wanted an audience, but Moovera didn't argue.

 

"Mulder said to keep you here, to keep you safe," Skinner said, once we were alone. He kept looking at me and looking away, as Mulder had after Pfaster attacked me. "I have sleeping pills in my overnight bag. The really good ones. Will you take one and get some rest?"

 

Rest for what, I'd wanted to ask. So I'd be fresh for the end of the world? To face whatever existence remained once the aliens moved on? Even if we survived inside this horrible cement maze, I couldn't think of one reason to keep drawing breath after we opened the bunker doors.

 

Pain rose inside me like pressure building in a geyser. It filled my abdomen, my chest and, before I could stop it, erupted. I covered my face with my hand and sobbed. Everything was gone. Mulder and I hadn't protected humanity. We hadn't protected the people we cared for. I hadn't even protected him.

 

I was a liability to Mulder, to everyone in this bunker. I could hate Skinner and Moovera for letting Mulder out, but I hated myself more.

 

Skinner's chair squeaked against the floor. He took the hot metal cup I'd forgotten I held and guided my head against his shoulder. His sweatshirt smelled of diesel fumes and gunpowder and damp cement, but also new. Fresh from the university bookstore. Back then, I hadn't known if Skinner was a UVA graduate or if Dmitry had hoped to be. Maybe they'd planned to take in a Cavaliers game - Skinner and his teenage nephew - on Saturday afternoon rather than manhandling me to the ground inside a decommissioned old bunker. The smell of the optimistically bought shirt made me even sadder.

 

I shrugged away from Skinner and sat back. On the old metal table, steam rose from the cup of coffee. I felt wrung out and sore, and thoroughly beaten in every way. Simultaneously trapped and lost: the cold, battered Schrodinger's cat of the end of our world. Skinner sat on the edge of the hospital bed, watching over me. He took my hand, anchoring both of us, I think.

 

I remember looking at my hand in Skinner's and thinking how odd that seemed. Yet not letting go. I felt a gentle, diffuse pressure fill my aching forehead. I inhaled. My headache lessened, yet the pressure increased.

 

Mulder was listening.

 

                     ***

 

Before and After: each word demarcated a passage, a transformation, a soul forever changed. There was Before my assignment to the X-files, Before Melissa died, Before my abduction, Before cancer. Before Emily, Before in vitro, Before colonization.

 

Before I realized Fox Mulder loved me and he didn't have a head injury or an ulterior motive. In his driven, dangerous, sometimes bizarre way, Mulder loved me. In my neurotic, over-controlled, over-intellectualized way, I loved him. Like fluorine loved electrons, and like the sun loved hydrogen. Passionately, hungrily, and at an elemental level. With the certainty of the laws of physics and a half-life of roughly forever.

 

These realizations arrived some months before Mulder and I worked up the courage to act on them, at least in the conventional, mouth-on-mouth, butterflies-in-my-belly sense of the word.

 

After, I remember Mulder remained quiet as the big hospital elevator lowered us down to the parking garage. Down and down, until it seemed the doors would open at Hell. I watched our reflection in the steel interior, but Mulder seemed lost in thought, as he often was during a case. Except we'd solved the case - or at least, resolved Mulder's alleged zombies: one dead deputy and four FBI agents' deaths - as much as we resolved most of our cases. Frank Black had his daughter. The ball dropped at midnight in Times Square, and my partner kissed me. Afterward, my partner put his arm around my shoulders casually and walked me to the elevator.

 

Mulder stood beside me, watching nothing, doing nothing, saying nothing, as we descended.

 

And descended.

 

Mulder's silence might have reflected a significant amount of opiates, having six stitches, and his right arm in a sling. Having narrowly escaped death. Or undeath, according to Mulder.

 

The elevator stopped. He followed me out, still silent. A cold wind greeted us, and New Year's Eve fireworks exploded around the hospital.

 

Ten feet from the elevator, Mulder announced, "What the hell. I'm doing it again." He grabbed my hand, pulled me to him, and kissed me. Softly. Still tentatively. Yet in a manner that made my knees wobbly.

 

As a medical doctor, I understood the neurochemical processes at work. If they occurred in an established friendship with a brilliant G-man built like an Olympic swimmer, they could easily result in this exact romantic scenario for a woman in my position.

 

So I kissed Fox Mulder back.

 

"World still didn't end, Scully," Mulder whispered, close enough his breath reached my skin. He'd smiled - those sleepy hazel eyes twinkling and a knowing smile that brightened dark days and compelled me onto red-eye flights and into rental cars, caves and sewers and spooky basements across America.

 

I'd forgotten Mulder's jacket. Instead of shivering in his t-shirt and dress pants, though, he seemed impervious to cold.

 

For once, I didn't analyze and dissect my emotions. Make lists of pros and cons. Even think of the future. Mulder's love has a certainty to it. I let go of reason and let that riptide of certainty take me.

 

"Try again," I encouraged. "Two out of three trials. Let's get a definitive result before we draw conclusions."

 

I stepped forward and put my arms around his neck. I opened my mouth, embracing him recklessly. Mulder's hand traveled down my arm and caressed my waist as he pressed against me.

 

We parted for breath. He glanced around the parking garage. "Still not the end of the world, Scully." He worried his mouth and checked his wristwatch. "Daylight savings time," he said, as if realizing it. "We have another thirty-three minutes before we bring about the end of days." He looked around the empty garage. "Does our rental car have a backseat?"

 

"We don't have a rental car, Mulder," I reminded him. "We're in Virginia. I drove you to the hospital in my car, and we'll pick up your car from the crime scene tomorrow. You got blood all over my car again."

 

"Sorry," he said. "Take me home. Let's play doctor." He paused thoughtfully. "Do you have your stethoscope and doctor coat at home?"

 

I remember laughing at him. "What exactly did they give you for pain?"

 

He fumbled with the topmost button on my blouse with his left hand. "Take me home, Dr. Scully. Take me somewhere. Now. No healing, no sleeping, no tomorrow. I'm fine. Good to go. Most of my best sex is one-handed."

 

"You're not fine. I'm taking you to my apartment and putting you to bed. Where I expect you to sleep."

 

"Fine." He got the button open. "Eventually. As long as you wear the doctor coat."

 

"Mulder, between blood loss and opiates and sheer exhaustion, at 38 years old, you might not want to get your hopes up tonight."

 

He glanced down at his crotch. His lower lip pushed out. "No," he said stubbornly. He leaned close to me again. "I love you. I want you. I want to make love to you before end times or alien colonization or this buzz wears off."

 

I kissed Mulder one last time before I steered him toward my car. As I buckled him in, he'd realized, "Shit. We're on Eastern Time."

 

"Do you think the world ends on Pacific Standard Time?"

 

"It could be too late for New Zealand." As if he just remembered, he said, "They're filming those 'Lord of the Rings' movies in New Zealand."

 

"I'm sure the ancient Mayans took the International Date Line into consideration," I told him. "Frodo and Liv Tyler are safe."

 

Mulder sounded so earnest as he said, "For Melvin Frohike's sake, I hope so."

 

I'd started the car, paid the bored parking attendant, and drove us toward DC. I remember, after midnight, how the highway had been empty, and the night sky clear and glittering with stars.

 

Mulder looked out the window. Away from the interstate, little fireworks exploded over farms and small towns. We passed lit signs for truck stops and restaurants and motels. Bright billboards advertised Old Navy and Pillsbury, and the TV shows _ER_ and _The West Wing_. The world seemed so bright and alive, even at night.

 

"I could be Frank Black," Mulder said, and turned his head to look at me. "If I had a child. With you, with Diana, with anyone. I am Frank Black," he declared. "I get so obsessed with conspiracies and the paranormal that I'd end up either miserably selling insurance or pursuing my quest at the cost to everyone around me. I might be as crappy a father as I had."

 

"I don't think that's true." I stole a glance at him as I drove. "You realize this opiate-fueled discussion is moot? At least, moot with me?"

 

Mulder's forehead developed a perplexed wrinkle: a kabuki mask of facial expression, by his standards. "Who else would I be talking about?" He laid his head back against the headrest. "I'm pretty sure we're at a precipice, Scully. Crossing the Rubicon, so to speak. I was thinking what all that might entail. There are still surrogates, donor ova... You want kids, but I can't even keep my fish alive. Also, I'm scared shitless and kinda stoned."

 

I reached in the back seat, fished for the plastic bag, and showed him the box of tampons I'd paid exponentially too much for in the hospital's gift shop. "I'm game, but you may want to wait a few days on your Rubicon crossing."

 

Mulder wrinkled his nose. He'd tangled with alleged zombies, liver-eating mutants, alien viruses, various mutants, and recently had Cancerman redecorate his neural network, yet menstrual blood grossed Mulder out. "That seems wholly unfair."

 

"You're preaching to the choir," I said.

 

He stayed quiet for several miles: long enough he'd either fallen asleep or found some new mystery to ponder.

 

The next thing he asked abruptly had been, "Do you love me?"

 

By then, enough cars traveled the interstate that I couldn't easily pull over and stop, or I would have. "Do I love you? Are you kidding me, Mulder?"

 

His eyebrows looked confused again. "No."

 

"Have you had another head injury?" I asked him. "Has your IQ dropped 80 points? Have you developed amnesia?"

 

He repeated, "No," hesitantly.

 

"What do you think?"

 

"I think you've never said it," he reminded me. "But you saved my life, you kissed me back, and I'm sure you'll find me something to eat one-handed when we get to your apartment."

 

"I will make you a sandwich," I promised.

 

"That's love, Scully," he'd said, and taken my hand as I drove home.

 

                     ***

 

In March 2000, we peeked out of the ground like gophers after the hawk flies on, unsure what carnage awaited but unable to stay hidden any longer. Walter Skinner overruled my argument I was immune to the Purity virus and should therefore go first. When the diesel for the generators ran out, I left the bunker fifth, behind Skinner, Moovera, a sous chef with a Lady Smith & Wesson, and Dmitry with a Geiger counter.

 

We opened the west bunker door, guns drawn, to bitter-cold air and a cocker spaniel gnawing Andy's frozen body. Beneath the snow, my FBI sedan remained parked where I left it, doors open, keys in the ignition. My overnight bag and medical kit sat in the trunk. Skinner's black SUV hadn't moved. I remember Dmitry thanked God and slogged through the snow to retrieve his cellphone charger.

 

The Geiger counter suggested local nuclear fallout was minimal, though atmospheric winds might disperse radioactive particles for months or years. Aside from the instrument's slow electronic click, click, click, a terrifying silence filled the broad, frozen valley. Leafless trees reached for an empty gray sky. The white world looked vast and dead. No cars moved. No planes or choppers flew overhead. We saw no other bodies. No bees. No spaceship. The earthquakes and shockwaves that shook the bunker: cracks ran up the resort's walls, and part of the hotel had burned. The parking lot and front lawn looked like the aftermath of an expensive demolition derby. We saw evidence of humanity's futile fight and flight - open suitcases, abandoned cars, empty cash registers, and an elegant lobby and bar pockmarked with bullet holes - but no people.

 

On the horizon to the north and to the west, the sky glowed orange from distant fires. Perhaps cities burned, perhaps oil or gas wells. Perhaps Yellowstone had erupted, for all we knew. Fine ash dusted the world and mixed with the snowflakes.

 

I didn't think of finding supplies or our next move or even of buttoning up my coat, though the temperature must have been twenty below. I remember standing in the circular driveway in front of the vast, ruined hotel, praying Mulder would emerge.

 

Someone had painted 'Even so, Amen,' in red on a now-bowed wall near the hotel's entrance. Red lines dripped from the letters like the words bled, and the can of spray paint remained on the porch, below the 'Amen.'

 

"'He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him,'" Skinner said from behind me. I looked back. Skinner stood ankle-deep in snow, with his coat open and his head and hands bare. The bitter cold reddened his cheeks. I knew the verse from Revelations; I didn't know Walter Skinner knew it. "'All kindred of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.'" 

 

"They thought this was God's judgment," I said. "'I am the Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end.'"

 

His footsteps crunched closer to me. "They were wrong, Scully. God didn't do this."

 

God allowed this, though, I remember thinking. As the aliens destroyed humanity, humans destroyed Earth trying to fight back.

 

A car ignition turned over sluggishly, and the engine purred to life. I must have jumped, because Skinner reminded me, "She's going to report Mulder for murder. Me too, apparently."

 

A green Jaguar left the valet parking lot with the silver-haired woman from the bunker behind the wheel. She must have visited her room in the hotel; she wore a fur coat, gloves, and sunglasses. She waited while Moovera and the chef pushed a series of cars away from the front gate, clearing a path for her. Each car rolled to reveal a rectangle of dead brown grass or cracked black asphalt amid the snow. The Jaguar's tires spun on the unplowed, unsalted road. She drove along the berm to get past the abandoned cars. Her taillights faded away, and the sound of the engine was gone, as well.

 

"Going where? To report you and Mulder to whom?" I asked Skinner as we stood on the frigid, snow-covered lawn, beneath the bleak gray sky. We'd never gotten the communications center in the bunker to work. No traffic moved on the road. No military or FEMA trucks rolled down the distant highway. No one had cell service and, inside the hotel, the telephones had no dial tone. Dmitry tried connecting my laptop to the hotel's high-speed internet line. Nothing. We'd tried walkie-talkies and the radio in a sheriff's car. Nothing.

 

"We can't be the only survivors," Skinner said. "There are other bunkers: Camp David, Mount Weather, Raven Rock. You said Mulder's out there, listening. If he's alive, others could be, as well." He looked down at me and asked, "Can you feel Mulder now?"

 

I shook my head. Mulder listened often at first, but less and less. Sometimes at night, as I lay in that dormitory bunk bed, I'd feel him listening. If I touched myself, he listened harder.

 

I hadn't felt Mulder inside my head in days.

 

"We'll go through the hotel rooms, the kitchen, and the maintenance buildings. A hotel this big has tanks to refuel their mowers and equipment. We need food, clothing," Skinner said. The hotel employees had pushed two maids' carts into the bunker before they closed the last of the interior doors, so we'd been showering and washing clothes with tiny, luxurious bars of soap and bottles of shampoo. "People know this bunker is here. It's well-fortified and, as long as we can find diesel, self-sufficient. There are gas stations nearby, and maybe even tankers of fuel on the highway. I say we stay on the proverbial higher ground a while, stay alive, and, if anyone else is alive out there, they'll come to us."

 

I turned in a circle, scanning every snowy shrub, every building, every Land Rover and BMW in the parking lot.

 

"Scully?" Skinner said worriedly. "Dana?"

 

"Okay," I agreed distractedly.

 

I'd heard the hotel employees talk about returning to their homes. Dmitry and Moovera: they wanted to leave, as well. Perhaps only this valley or this state or the east coast looked like this. Or just the States. Or North America. Perhaps Moovera's wife and sister in New Delhi, India were fine. Perhaps Moovera's son, doing an internship in Moscow, was fine. Skinner's sister Helena in Philly and Skinner's mother on vacation in Florida and his brothers scattered on Marine bases all over the country: all fine. Perhaps the UN would drop aid packages out of the sky any moment. I could call my mother and see my brothers and nephews and Mulder would walk over the crest of that snow-covered hill.

 

"Once we have fuel again, I want to incinerate Andy's body. I'd bury him but-" The toe of his shoe tapped the snow atop the frozen ground.

 

I nodded as I watched the white horizon. In the distance, among bare trees, an invisible human form distorted the space around it. It moved sideways and curiously forward, shimmering like the cloaked Predator from the movie. The head tilted and two yellow eyes glowed. Not leftover autumn leaves, not a reflection off the ice: eyes.

 

If that energy field, that remnant of a soul was Mulder, I didn't feel him listening. Maybe I hallucinated. Maybe I saw a monster. Maybe I wanted to believe.

 

A cold hand took mine, and it wasn't Mulder's hand. "Dana," Skinner said sharply. "Snap out of it. We either live or we die. That simplifies the choices. You're a scientist. I need to know if this ash is radioactive or volcanic or something else. I need you to check the river water for contaminants so we're not burning diesel processing water in the bunker if we don't have to."

 

The glowing yellow eyes faded into gray trees and white snowdrifts.

 

"I killed Donnie Pfaster," I confessed. "Mulder lied in his report. Mulder didn't enter my apartment after I shot Pfaster; Mulder was standing in my apartment with his weapon trained on Pfaster. Pfaster was unarmed. I shot him anyway, and Mulder witnessed me do it."

 

Skinner blinked. "Fox Mulder filed a report in a timely manner. I knew he was lying. A spaceship in the sky, Scully. An alien virus spread by bees, and everyone we know - everyone not standing right here - is probably dead. Why is who shot Donnie Pfaster relevant? He's dead and we're not." His hand squeezed mine. "We're alive. You need shoes and clothing, and I'm having something besides canned pears and powdered eggs for dinner."

 

He thought like a Marine. Like a leader. He shut down his emotions in order to stay alive. I respected his strength and adaptability. Still, all I could think to say was, "Mulder's not dead."

 

"Not as long as you can hear him," Skinner assured me.

 

From the front gate, a man's voice called, "Hey, you folks."

 

Skinner's hand left mine. He drew his weapon, pushed me behind him, and pivoted toward the voice. I stepped behind a car and followed his lead. Moovera, on the hotel's broad front porch, had his revolver drawn. Moovera and Skinner saw the men and heard the men; I wasn't hallucinating.

 

Two bearded men stood in the driveway, wearing heavy coveralls and blaze orange knit hats. One looked in his seventies, the other about Skinner and Moovera's age. Both held hunting rifles pointed at the ground. "Not looking for any trouble," the old man assured us. "We heard a car pass. Came hoping someone might be home. Were you in the bunker? We saw all the doors closed."

 

"Yes," Skinner called back. "Are there any other survivors?"

 

"Not that we've seen," the middle-aged man called back. His breath made white clouds. His Appalachian accent was less noticeable than the older man's. "My father and I went to our hunting cabin and got snowed in. By the time we dug out and got to the closest town-" He gestured with his free hand to the quake-damaged, blackened buildings and jumble of empty cars beneath the snow. "You're the first folks we've seen."

 

The remainder of our group gathered in front of the hotel with armloads of clothing and boxes of canned food. Someone had cans of gasoline. Dmitry held an acoustic guitar: a prognostication of his future life choices.

 

Skinner lowered his weapon a few inches. "I'm Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the FBI." He nodded to Moovera and me. "This is Ahsan Moovera, from Quantico, and Dr. Dana Scully, a Special Agent from the DC office."

 

"I'm Ronnie White," the old man called back. He shifted his stance. "My boy's Ron. Ron's a plumber down in Blacksburg. I'm retired, but about fifty years ago I poured the concrete for that bunker."

 

"Is she a medical doctor, Director Skinner?" the son asked.

 

"She is," Skinner answered for me.

 

"Pop cut his leg last week. He has sugar, and the cut won't heal. If she's a doctor-"

 

"We need a hunting rifle," Skinner countered quickly. "One of your rifles and ammunition in exchange for medical treatment and you telling me everything you know about this bunker and this area. If you're not looking for any trouble, we should get along fine."

 

I wondered what wound healing I could manage with contaminated swabs, #15 scalpels, Adson's forceps, and ether.

 

"Pop's got a gun cabinet full of rifles; take your pick. There's a pharmacy down the road, and a medical school over the mountain," the son said. "I got a four-wheeler with chains. Dr. Scully, tell me what you need, and you'll have it."

 

Though I'd have rather gone myself, I made a list. Ron White returned with most of what I requested, and I cleaned and dressed his father's wound. They had a stockpile of insulin, enough to last a few months. The chef walked home in the snow, returned to the bunker by dusk, and prepared a white-tailed doe Skinner shot near the train station. The other men returned as well, saying the highway was impassable. Pavement had buckled, an overpass bridge had fallen, and wrecked vehicles piled atop each other. With no other options, Skinner's plan seemed ideal: stay near the bunker, scavenge what we could, and survive on our own if help never arrived.

 

Help never arrived, of course.

 

Summer never came that year, but the snow stopped for a few minutes in July. Even mid-summer, the sky remained a dreary gray, and the temperature below freezing. Men trickled out of the mountains and off the highway and train tracks. No one could know how many souls lived through colonization, but the men who reached the bunker had military training or knew how to survive in the outdoors, and they got lucky. They didn't die of sepsis or tetanus or cryptosporidiosis or starvation. Or of diabetic ketoacidosis or anaphylaxis or a myocardial infarction because they ran out of medication. By August, White Sulphur Springs had every branch of Special Forces, and a smattering of Secret Service and CIA agents. The 'Alpha Males' I observed, and the name stuck. Moovera even made a sign.

 

Lawrence North came in early that autumn, with his German shepherd, Cynthia, riding shotgun in a military Jeep. Lawrence survived with a group of men in one of the CIA's Virginia bunkers, and arrived in White Sulphur Springs with radiation sickness: headache, nausea, hair falling out. He was gaunt, with sores that wouldn't heal. Skinner mentioned Alpha Colony had a doctor, and Lawrence wanted me to treat Cynthia.

 

A quiet, physically imposing mountain man named Brewster arrived two weeks later, driving an ancient Chevy truck. Brewster had a salt-and-pepper beard down to his chest, a young, auburn-haired teenage boy in the passenger seat, and a homemade coffin beneath a tarp in the back. He had fresh eggs and rounds of cheese and moonshine to trade for a service: incinerate his wife's body. She'd died a week earlier, but the ground remained too frozen to dig a grave. Brewster hadn't explained how he knew the bunker had an incinerator, nor had he seemed interested in joining Alpha Colony. In fact, Brewster and his son appeared to be faring better than us.

 

I wheeled a gurney from the medical clinic, Skinner fired up the incinerator, and our men gathered to move the coffin. BJ, the teenage boy, got out of the cab, wearing camouflage coveralls and walking with a pronounced limp. Bending his own rules, Skinner let Brewster and BJ accompany the coffin through the bunker's west tunnel. I pushed the gurney slowly, matching the boy's pace. Brewster's son kept one arm close to his body, and gave me a brave grin higher on one side of his mouth than the other. BJ's dark auburn hair reminded me of Charlie, and his crooked smile, of Mulder; I liked him immediately.

 

Brewster and BJ turned up again a few weeks after that, bringing smoked hams and marijuana and more eggs and cheese - in theory to trade, though we had little to offer aside from shelter, canned food, medical attention, and company. Skinner told Brewster to stop bringing moonshine and pot, so for Halloween, they brought us a box of newly-hatched chicks. Once, even as the snowstorms raged, they drove in with a transfer tank of diesel fuel. We didn't see father or son again until May, when Brewster arrived at Alpha Colony with another hand-made coffin in the back of his old truck. Brewster had gone hunting, he said; the boy had been home, tending their stock. Someone or something wanted their pigs and chickens and cows badly enough to get past Brewster's booby-traps and kill a fifteen-year-old boy who couldn't reload or run away.

 

Brewster remained in Alpha Colony like a stray tomcat who adopted a family: silently, skittishly. On his own terms. He went out with Skinner and the foragers, but also on his own. Some men in Alpha Colony forever searched for their families; I think Brewster forever searched for the rovers or monsters who killed his son.

 

As they ran out of food, the last of the doomsday preppers emerged from their bunkers. In their search for other survivors, many, like John Byers, made their way to us. A few men brought a woman they introduced as their wife - a relationship post-dating colonization - but two families with children survived intact. People moved into any nearby, undamaged house old enough to have a fireplace or wood-burning stove. Old wells got uncovered, tested, and used. As the weather allowed, Skinner had men clear the abandoned cars from the roads and highway. We replaced or patched the smaller bridges. We collected and inventoried supplies, and rounded up surviving livestock. As the cold lessened, we built greenhouses. Skinner's men raided gas stations and storage tanks, bringing in tankers of precious diesel fuel to fill the bunker's three 14,000 gallon tanks. We ate a lot of canned food and venison, and we shivered, but we survived.

 

We encountered people from the groups in New Richmond and Norfolk Inland and Ashland and Mount Weather, and heard about the survivors on the west coast. Rumors abounded: an earthquake destroyed the West Coast and a tsunami the East Coast. Men said the Hoover Dam collapsed, and the towers of the World Trade Centers buried lower Manhattan. Skinner sent scouts to Washington DC and Atlanta and Indianapolis and the coast. Nothing remained of Washington except radioactive rubble, the scouts reported and, in Atlanta, the CDC and everything else had been bombed, destroyed by quakes and riots, or burned to the ground. The tsunami damage reached miles inland, the coastal team reported. A group of sailors had banded together, but Naval Station Norfolk no longer existed; the submarines returned expecting a port but found debris-pocked sand. The first team Skinner sent west, to Providence Colony and on to Indianapolis, never returned.

 

The generators usually stayed on. The water treatment plant produced potable hot and cold water, and the kitchen produced whatever food could be hunted, scavenged, or, in time, grown or raised. A few people drifted into Alpha Colony and moved on, wanting to scavenge off a cold, decaying world rather than work to build a new one. Most men stayed, though. Did whatever tasks Skinner assigned them, followed Skinner's rules, ate canned pears, didn't die of hypothermia, and counted themselves blessed.

 

The wealthy old woman who drove away in her Jaguar in search of justice: we never saw her again.

 

We heard stories of the Badlands - anything between Louisville and Denver, Wyoming and the Mexican border. The Purity virus killed men, not the monsters and mutants and the embodiments of evil Mulder and I once chased with our FBI badges. I found I wasn't alone in seeing the glowing yellow eyes among the trees and the shapes shimmering like air against hot pavement. Moovera called them 'pishachas.' Hindu demons. Mulder would have gone with the more local 'mothmen.' Regardless, whatever we glimpsed, they existed. Every shape-shifter and vampire, demon and nightmare, theoretically remained. CGB Spender remained, men said. Alex Krycek survived, according to rumors. But they were rumors; Byers' map listed neither name. We began hearing stories of Mulder: a telepathic killer, a traitor against humanity. The most dangerous man alive, someone claimed.

 

'Alive' was the only thing that mattered. Mulder was alive, and the stories apocryphal, I decided. But he didn't return. No matter how hard I thought it, he didn't return. Still, every so often, as I began to lose faith, I'd feel Mulder listening.

 

                     ***

 

Aside from being impregnable and nominally above freezing, the bunker's greatest resources were warm showers and electric lights. The exhibit hall held sofas, tables, and exercise equipment. After a day's work, men lingered as late at night as Skinner let them: reading, playing cards and darts, sparring, lifting weights, and swapping stories. Skinner nixed using our precious electricity to power televisions and stereos, but the men found rechargeable batteries and charged them somewhere outside the bunker, so a boom box played The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Three Dog Night, and Faith Hill CD's. A handful of the men were young enough Puff Daddy was popular; unfortunately, so was Shania Twain.

 

At 10:00PM, the bunker switched to emergency power, and the music and male voices gradually became a chorus of male snoring. As a female doctor with her own bedroom, I'd lit an oil lamp, lain on the lower bunk, and kept reading. At 10:45, our fearless leader and resident hall monitor knocked on the dental clinic's door.

 

I opened the door, and Skinner stared at me so long I checked my robe, ensuring I had it tied closed. I'd picked through the clothing left by the hotel guests, but the expensive lingerie and silk pajamas didn't suit the consistently sixty-degree bunker. I put in an order for wool socks and blue jeans and long johns and anything flannel the foragers could find in a petite small. The box of clothing arrived that afternoon. I probably looked like a polar explorer in fuzzy pink slippers, but I was almost warm.

 

"I-I can see the light under your door," Skinner told me. He wore a new, mustard yellow Carhartt jacket over his shirt and jeans. Snow dusted his shoulders, as if he'd just come inside. "We all know your little secret, Scully."

 

"I'm a medical doctor, and I know the man in charge," I reminded him. "Big stern silent guy. Glasses. Saves money on haircuts. We used to sit next to each other at the FBI."

 

His tolerant grin took a few seconds to form. "That sounds like something Mulder would say."

 

"It is."

 

Another awkward moment passed with Skinner standing in the dark, empty medical clinic and me in the doorway of my bedroom. Something behind my right shoulder held his interest. I looked. The textbook I'd been reading lay on the bunk, and the lamp burned on the table; neither likely riveted him.

 

"Skinner? Sir?"

 

"I hope everything fits," he said abruptly. "Women's sizes have no rhyme or reason. When I had to buy for-" Skinner stopped speaking again. He glanced around my bedroom and each direction in the dim hall. His chest rose. "I got blacklisted at the Macy's return desk, Before. Before she died," he added, as if to clarify in the most oblique manner possible.

 

I got the lamp, held it up, and looked at him. Hypothermia had been my first guess, given the temperature outside. "Are you okay, sir?"

 

"I was, right up until I came in the bunker. Now it's like my head's in an echoing fog." I saw him take another deep breath. "I'm sorry. It's been happening all afternoon, but now it's..." He trailed off. "Moo said you wanted to see me."

 

"It can wait." I nodded toward the exam room. "Let's have a look at you." I took the oil lamp with me and herded him two doors down. "Shirt off, on the table. You know the drill."

 

"I don't feel sick," Skinner protested, but took off his coat. He shrugged off his holster and unbuttoned a heavy flannel shirt. Like his coat, his shirt and work boots looked new - foraged along with my clothes. Earlier, I asked the man who brought my new clothes where he'd found them. The man answered simply, "Hell, Dr. Scully."

 

I pressed my stethoscope to Skinner's chest and listened to his lungs. I heard a normal heart rhythm, normal lung sounds. Empty stomach. Nice shoulder and chest definition. His blood pressure was normal. His pupils looked fine. He shook his head 'no' as I asked about nausea, blurred vision, dizziness. I had him shuck off his t-shirt. His torso bore scars - faint ones from Vietnam and a less faded one courtesy of the man who killed my sister - but no recent injuries or signs of illness. As usual, he presented as a fit, healthy, middle-aged man in need of a few more calories and a good night's sleep.

 

I stepped back to get my otoscope.

 

He blinked again and rolled his shoulders, as if trying to wake up. "I saw your textbook. You're brushing up on obstetrics?" he asked.

 

"We have an expectant mother aboveground," I said. His ears looked fine. Even clean. "And, unfortunately, about twenty potential expectant fathers. That was why I wanted to see you."

 

He nodded distractedly as I tried to get his temperature. "I was hoping you wanted to complain about the Shania Twain CD's."

 

"She's prostituting, sir," I informed him.

 

Skinner nodded again, still thwarting my new digital thermometer. "Is she complaining someone hadn't paid her? Or roughed her up? Or is this about her pregnancy? The men have prophylactics; making them use them is her job."

 

His body temperature registered normal, but I felt my face grow hot. "She is prostituting."

 

He shrugged disinterestedly. "She's a consenting adult. What she does with her evenings is her own business."

 

I repeated a third time, in case I wasn't clear, "She is prostituting herself."

 

Skinner pressed his fingertips against his temples. "Yes, she is. I know. I understand this is your particular-" He gestured irritably. "-bugaboo, but I have larger issues to deal with, Scully."

 

"My bugaboo? Are you kidding me?"

 

His brow furrowed. "We trade your services for goods all the time. Not everyone has an MD to barter with. I don't mean to be crude, but it's a seller's market."

 

As I palpated his lymph nodes, I asked, "Are you a part of this market?"

 

"Stop," he ordered and shied back. "No. No, I'm not, and you're making my head worse, Scully. I can't even think."

 

I stared at him, puzzled. "I'm making it worse?" Potential diagnoses ran through my mind. I put my hand on his chin and crown. "Tilt your head downward. Any pain or stiffness? Any stiffness in your legs?"

 

"Stop," he repeated forcefully. I think if I hadn't stepped back, he would have pushed me back. "I don't have meningitis. It's-" He gestured to his temple. "Pressure, but not a headache. It's distracting."

 

"There's no pain?"

 

"No. Nothing hurts. I'm not sick. It's like ringing in my ears, except in my head," he explained. "You touching me makes it worse. When you're-" He took my elbow and had me step toward him again, between his knees and as close as the exam table allowed. "Now it's worse. Louder."

 

"Louder?" My differential diagnosis made an abrupt departure from the ICD-9. "It's- He's- But why?" I asked, and answered my own question. The air left my lungs, as if I'd been body-slammed to the cement floor. I swallowed and told him hoarsely, "It's Mulder. Mulder's listening to you."

     

Skinner's brow furrowed again. "I thought he only listened to you. How can Mulder listen to me?"

 

Some previously unknown organ between my stomach and my spine developed palpations. The shaking radiated outward, spiraling upward to my throat and downward to my hands. "He can. He, he knows you hate model trains. He knew Andy Bennett was your college roommate. He can."

 

Skinner nodded uncertainly. Uncomfortably. "All right. Why is Fox Mulder listening to me? Why are you listening to me, Mulder?"

 

"You don't have to say it. Mulder can hear everything you're thinking. He can see everything you see, and he can feel everything you're feeling." I stepped close, putting my palm against his bare shoulder and resting my forehead against his. "Is he listening now?"

 

My former boss nodded.

 

I stroked his jaw, feeling stubble beneath my fingertips. I took a breath, moistened my lips, and kissed him gently. "Now?"

 

"I think you have his full attention," Skinner said. I moved to kiss him again, but he turned his face away. "I'm not the doctor or the profiler, Dana. Please explain why Fox Mulder's in my head and you're very much in my personal space?"

 

"He's never coming back. Whatever's happened, Mulder believes he can't ever return." Hearing the words aloud made them all the more horrible. "He respects you. He trusts you. He knows I trust and respect you."

 

Skinner looked like I'd offered him some Klingon delicacy with the worms still wiggling. "I'm not liking where I think this respect and trust business is going, Dana. You're a beautiful woman, but I'm a married-" He stopped speaking abruptly.

 

"If Sharon could hear my thoughts right now, feel my sensations," I asked earnestly, "if you could touch her through me, wouldn't you?"

 

"That's different."

 

"How is it different? Mulder's trapped or maybe dying out there in that frozen Hell, and I can't help him. He can listen to me anytime he wants, but he's not. He could listen to any man in this bunker, but he's listening to you. He's listening, right now. He hears me, and he's still listening. I'm a consenting adult. You have no issue with exploiting a woman's body; how does that differ from Mulder using your body?"

 

"I've seen Mulder's magazines," Skinner reminded me, and tilted his head. "I'm afraid I'll wake up wearing foil-lined, tractor-beam-deflecting panties."

 

The sarcasm, the rhythm of the words, and his body language: I heard Mulder. Not the voice, but the essence, the gestalt.

 

Skinner blinked, seeming surprised. "That's Mulder, isn't it? Inside my head?"

 

I nodded. I had more rational arguments, more ammunition for my case, but all I managed was, "Please." 

 

After a long moment of consideration, Skinner took my hand. "What is it Mulder wants?"

 

His palm felt warm. Strong. Stabilizing. The quake inside me lessoned to measurable on the Richter scale but still able to level cities. I said, "Me. He wants to touch me. The details are secondary. Whatever you want. Whatever you like."

 

His thumb caressed the back of my hand. He mouthed more than said, "Okay."

 

"Have you been visiting the prostitute?"

 

"No. Julie's a kid. She's about-" He gestured vaguely with his free hand. "-nineteen and a hippy. Dmitry's sweet on her. He's paying her with the marijuana I keep confiscating from him. His stash is like the biblical widow's olive oil."

 

"She's twenty-six, and she has chlamydia."

 

He grimaced uncomfortably. "I think Mulder found that funny."

 

"I'm glad I could amuse both of you." I eased my robe off my shoulders and unbuttoned the front of my flannel pajama top. Beneath it, I wore thermal long johns, and a t-shirt or two beneath that. Under everything, an entire migration of monarch butterflies fluttered in my abdomen. "There will be a brief intermission while the forensic pathologist disrobes."

 

"Here?" he said hesitantly. "I'm the one bunking in a men's dorm. You have a bedroom, Scully," he said, and I remembered I did.

 

                     ***

     

One windy Sunday in October, Fox Mulder - two days home from the hospital, still barred from driving, and still sporting six holes in his cranium and an awful haircut - had two goals: uncovering The Truth and cheering the Yankees to victory in the 1999 World Series. My bedroom lacked a television, so Mulder lay on my sofa, a patchwork of sweatpants and Band-Aids and pill bottles beneath a pale green comforter. After I dissuaded him from work, he'd spent Friday and Saturday on my sofa with two feather pillows, the green comforter, and a bag of sunflower seeds: Ritz Carlton luxury, by Mulder's standards.

 

I'd bought the comforter at Macy's with my mother, and splurged on a matching dust ruffle and coordinating throw pillows. The blue and black suits I collected from the dry cleaner's late that afternoon: from Saks and Neiman Marcus. I carried in grocery bags overflowing with bananas and pineapples and avocados and orange juice. My dresser held a sweater that still smelled like Melissa's perfume, my mother was a phone call away, and my sofa held Mulder: alive, mending, and a word or a few steps away.

 

Diana Fowley's murder remained unsolved. The markings on the African artifact, as well as its frightening effect on Mulder, remained unexplained. According to Mulder, Albert Hosteen's doppelganger had appeared at my apartment, and Earth's sixth extinction still loomed. The next morning, Mulder and I would return to the basement of the Hoover Building to investigate smokescreens and pursue whispers in the shadows. That autumn evening, though, as the breeze made falling leaves scamper past my windows, Mulder watched baseball, and I watched Mulder. In my living room, at the bottom of the seventh inning, the future looked uncertain for Mulder's beloved Yankees, but Mulder had faith.

 

Fox Mulder always had faith. Hope. A constant, I remember thinking: that which remained unchanged under all circumstances. I wanted Mulder to remain unchanged. To continue his quest and to find his truth. Even if I couldn't Gram stain 'The Truth,' I trusted Mulder to recognize it. Mulder called me his touchstone - the standard by which the truth is judged - but Mulder was my Ahab, my Don Quixote. His passion pushed me onward, and his courage gave me hope.

 

"Should I go?" Mulder's voice asked.

 

I blinked. The baseball game had gone to commercial, and I stood beside the sofa, absently holding a glass of juice I'd poured for Mulder. "Should you go?" I echoed. "Go where?"

 

"A tie means extra innings, and it's getting late," Mulder explained. "My mother would say I'm overstaying my welcome. If you want your sofa and television set back, I'll take the Metro and be home in time for the post-game wrap-up." He shifted against the stack of pillows. "You can do whatever you do on Sunday nights, Scully. Rewrite Einstein. Send Surgeon General Satcher fan mail. Nit-pick the scientific fallacies of _Farscape_. I'll see you at work in the morning."

 

"Mulder, are you kidding me?" I knew the game's importance. Or at least, its importance to Mulder. I didn't know how many baseball games constituted a World Series, or if the winning team got rings or flowers or bragging rights. I did know Mulder had been riveted to the pre-game interviews when I'd left to run errands and riveted to the game as I returned. He'd built a fire in my fireplace and left the toilet seat up again, but I saw no other evidence of movement. "One: I'm a medical doctor, and you have no business going to work tomorrow. Two: if you do insist on going to work, you have your suit from Friday, the dry cleaner did your shirt, and I washed the rest of your clothes. You can spend another night here, and ride to work with me."

 

Mulder looked dubious. "I'm not sure my masculinity can withstand another morning shave with a pink razor."

 

"I've seen your masculinity. You'll be fine. Watch your game."

 

Six muscles control human eye movement, ruled by the trochlear, abducens, and oculomotor nerves. The optic and oculomotor nerves fuel pupillary response. Twelve more muscles control the mouth, and a true smile differs structurally from a false one. Mulder's grin was genuine, and his pupil dilation involuntary. The fire crackled and the baseball game resumed. Mulder bent his legs, making space at the end of the sofa. "Watch the game with me, G-woman."

 

"I'm not a baseball fan." I had a million things to do, and watching paint dry sounded more interesting than watching a baseball game. Still, I set the glass of juice on the coffee table and sat down. Mulder rested his bare feet on my lap and covered both of us with the comforter. The fireplace crackled, and my grocery bags sat on the kitchen counter. My dry cleaning remained looped over a dining room chair. E-mail went unread, bills unpaid. Leaves tumbled down the sidewalk, beneath the Georgetown streetlights. I felt warm. Safe.

 

Eighty-five days after that evening, Fox Mulder became only an occasional odd pressure inside my mind. I'd lose the little piles of sunflower seed shells and the bad puns and sexual innuendos. The smell of his hair on my pillows, the sight of his handwriting in a file, the feel of his skin against mine: everything would vanish. In eighty-five days, I'd lose - not only my partner and friend and lover - but the counterweight giving me balance, and the constant giving me hope and faith. Half of my heart would be ripped away, yet I would inexplicably remain alive.

 

Missy had believed in premonitions and deja vu. My mother believed in dream interpretation and going outside with wet hair caused colds. As a scientist, I believed in the ideomotor reflex and memory bias and the law of large numbers. I know what I saw that night, though.

 

As I lounged with Mulder, looking past the television and out a window, a red star glowed in Cassiopeia and vanished, like the sky winked at me.

 

I shielded the bright television screen with my hand and looked again. In the sprawling W-shaped constellation, the crimson dot reappeared, far brighter than the stars around it.

 

The red star faded.

 

I don't recall getting up or going to the window. I never heard Mulder follow me. One moment I sat on my living room sofa, and the next, Mulder stood behind me at the window with his hand on my shoulder. He said my name in a way suggesting increasingly worried repetition. "What's happening? Answer me. Scully, what do you see?"

 

The baseball game continued on my television set. The autumn leaves tumbling outside, the groceries warming on the kitchen counter: nothing had changed.

 

"I thought I saw-" I stared at the familiar stars, disoriented. The red light lingered in my memory like the final notes of a lovely song. "Something."

 

"You've been standing at the window for minutes. Not moving, not responding. Like you were in a trance."

 

I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles seconds had passed, not minutes. I glanced back and saw Mulder's expression, and minutes seemed likely. Or longer. Long enough Mulder's hand remained on my shoulder, preventing my escape.

 

"I saw a red star with a magnitude of at least negative three or four. Maybe brighter. I- It could have been a satellite or a meteor," I speculated. "But it was placed correctly for Supernova 1572. The dying star that led Tycho Brahe to conclude the heavens weren't fixed and begin to doubt Earth as the center of the universe."

 

Mulder stood so close the heat from his chest reached my back. "Tycho Brahe? The guy with the-" I looked back as Mulder encircled the tip of his nose with his finger, indicating the false nose Brahe wore.

 

"Tycho Brahe, whose observations and calculations became the foundation of modern astronomy."

 

Mulder the Believer had looked out the window with me. The W of white and yellow stars remained, but the bright red one didn't reappear. "You saw it? You think it's back?"

 

"Supernovae don't come back. The star burns through its fuel, goes supernova, and afterward exists as a remnant." I looked a final time, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Cassandra Spender spoke of feeling drawn to the stars in Cassiopeia. Watching the sky, I felt a lingering hint of the call that drew me to Skyland Mountain, months earlier. I shook my head and the disoriented sensation passed.

 

I touched the back of my neck, feeling for the chip that, theoretically, held back the cancer in my brain. The microchip remained in place.

 

After I lowered my hand, Mulder's fingertips touched the same spot. His hand slid down my neck and over my shoulder. After a second, he put an arm across my chest and rested his chin on top of my head, holding me. He exhaled, but his heart pounded against my shoulder.

 

"There are all sorts of deep sky objects in Cassiopeia," I assured both of us. "Or I could be short on sleep. I stayed at the hospital with you. I'm jet-lagged. Maybe I'm coming down with a migraine headache."

 

"You don't get migraine headaches, Scully." He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek. His lips felt soft. Warm. "Don't you go anywhere. Did you feel them summoning you?"

 

"No," I lied. "I- I thought I saw something. Something that shouldn't be there."

 

"A ship?"

 

"No." I shrugged away. "Not a ship. A red flash. Probably a meteor."

 

Mulder had a dogged look that, in my experience, preceded a call for bail or from an ER by about twenty-four hours. "You check with NASA and NORAD and see if they saw it. I'll check the Internet newsgroups."

 

"No." I remember crossing my arms and staring up at him. I'd kicked off my shoes, so Mulder towered over me. I compensated for my lack of height with a surge of bitchy. "It's Sunday evening. The last two weeks have been horrific, and we have work - actual FBI work - tomorrow morning. Stop being ridiculous. I'm fine, and I'm not calling anyone except the pizza guy. Either watch your baseball game or go home."

 

I stalked back to the sofa and curled up on my end. Mulder remained at the window. He studied the sky like he planned to paint it from memory.

 

"I'm fine. There's nothing out there, Mulder."

 

"You're wrong." He hadn't budged, and his back remained toward me. "I'm not being ridiculous," Mulder told the stars. "Right now, I'm living on your sofa for no reason except the pillows and blanket smell like you. You're my partner and my best friend and you look hotter in cotton pajamas than any other woman on the planet. You don't make fun of this stupid haircut, and you have not repudiated us having a romantic future together. My genetics get implanted in your body on a monthly basis, which feels personal even though I'm in the waiting room as it happens. I love you. I know you don't want me saying it, but I do. I love you," he repeated. "Something is out there. Something happened, and it's not ridiculous to want to protect you."

 

I stared at Mulder, and Mulder stared at the stars. On the television, the baseball announcers jabbered like excited chipmunks.

 

I could detect thousands of obscure poisons in a corpse years after the death. I could spout off the bones on the human hand and all the counties in California. I could recognize craters on the Moon, but recognizing the extent of Mulder's love... The scientific basis of human pair bonding remained poorly understood, especially among female forensic pathologists.

 

Eventually, I replied, "I never said I don't want you saying it."

 

He glanced back.

 

"I felt something for a few seconds, but not now," I admitted. "Now, I'm fine. You're missing your game."

 

Mulder stood firm at the corner of Paranoid and Completely Scientifically Impossible. "What if the chip's stopped working? What if that's what you felt?"

 

"Mulder, I'm not arguing this." Of course, I'd added, "We don't even know what the chip does except get me detained at every metal detector in America."

 

"You're not dead," Mulder pointed out.

 

That, I hadn't argued.

 

In retrospect, sometimes I marvel at the Herculean stubbornness of Mulder's love. He never gave up on discovering the truth, and he never gave up on me, though I thwarted him at every turn.

 

"Come here, Mulder." He still hadn't budged. With a sigh, I got up, went to the window, and led him back to the sofa. "You're right. It's not ridiculous of you to want to protect me, but I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere, so sit down and explain how this pinstriped obsession of yours works."

 

Mulder returned to his end of the sofa but held my hand as if a teleporter might beam one of us up.

 

The seconds and minutes slipped into a Sunday evening of my life. The baseball players on television batted and bunted and caught and scratched themselves. Strikes were called, base coaches gestured secret signals, and fifty-thousand fans in Turner Stadium watched, according to the announcer. Headlights passed outside my apartment. The milk and orange juice on my counter probably cultured bacteria at an alarming rate. Nothing unusual reappeared in the sky over Georgetown, and Mulder held my hand.

 

I stole glances at his profile: the dark shadow of stubble on his jaw, the little round Band-Aids covering the wounds high on his temples. I'd come so close to losing Mulder; I understood his terror at losing me.

 

"I never said I disliked you saying it," I repeated, as one team left the field and another trotted out, and at least ten minutes after the original conversation. "Or that I don't love you. For the record, I do. It just scares the hell out of me."

 

Without looking away from the game, and like a teenager in a movie theater retaining plausible deniability, Mulder ran his thumb over mine. My heartbeat and breathing quickened. The fine hair rose on my forearms, yet my skin felt warmer. "Maybe it's all the pink razors, but for the record, Scully, it scares the hell out of me, too."

 

I'd say I didn't breathe, but that's scientifically impossible. 

 

"Do you think that chip-" His Adam's apple bobbed. "Could the chip be the reason in vitro doesn't take? Or doesn't take for long?"

 

"Mulder, it's a moot point. I'm out of viable ova. Even if I wasn't-" I stroked Mulder's ankle with my other hand and watched the dark hair fall against his skin. Mulder had long, slim feet, with runner's callouses and neat nails. I'd worked out the math. Genetics were a lottery, but the odds favored a tall, dark-eyed, brown-haired child with detached earlobes and a prominent nose and A Positive blood. As the Yankees rallied, I confessed, "I saw the ship in Africa restore life, and the shards reanimate the virus in your bloodstream. I was exposed to the ship, and for a moment, I let myself think..." I trailed off, unwilling to voice such folly, even to Mulder.

 

"Keep trying. We can keep trying." Fox Mulder, whose leaps seemed so random to the casual observer, wasn't. His pronoun change was for my benefit. The Yankees batted in a run, tying the Atlanta Braves. "I want you, and you want normal things, Scully."

 

"Not without you. Without you, I don't want them."

 

Mulder had watched me spend thirty-thousand dollars and seven cycles of in vitro to pursue normal things without him, but he didn't say that. His chest rose and fell. According to the TV screen, Derek Jeter batted in a run and the Yankees pulled ahead. Instead of cheering, Mulder said quietly, "But I want you to have them. Otherwise, what's the point in this quest for the truth? Isn't our endgame to find it? Don't we want to uncover the government's experiments on its citizens and prove we are not alone in the universe? We're close, Scully, and I do occasionally give thought to what happens if we succeed. If we have a future, what it holds. What it's like to have a normal little life. Together."

 

I looked at Mulder's tan fingers against mine and scraped together my courage. "If we have a future, we'll figure it out," I assured him. "Probably at glacial speed, and with the aid of tequila and a life-threatening illness or injury. Alternately, if the world ends- Hell, Mulder; if the world ends, where else would I be except with you?"

 

Mulder smiled and stroked my hand again. "You should put that on a Hallmark card, Scully. Put a picture of the Roswell crash on the front and make the cardstock drip Black Oil. Make it a scratch-and-sniff smelling faintly of cigarette smoke."

 

Outside my window, the bright, out-of-place red star appeared one final time, long enough to show me it existed. Eighty-five days. I didn't tell Mulder that night, but I'd felt it like animals sensed earthquakes. The truth was out there; we just hadn't known it.

 

"Scully, can you maybe-" Mulder pulled my hand toward his end of the sofa. "Maybe that red flash was a sign, like the Star of Bethlehem: the Supernova of Georgetown. I'm not suggesting skipping to the Brown Chicken, Brown Cow; the World Series is on. But maybe, during the World Series, if I love you and you love me, the universe doesn't want us remaining on opposite ends of the couch."

 

"It wasn't a supernova, Mulder." I moved as far as the middle sofa cushion.

 

The green comforter remained on the floor. We never called the pizza guy.

 

Eighty-five days. In hindsight, I wish I had kissed Mulder. Had him spend the night in my bed rather than on the sofa. Made love. Instead, I held his hand during the Yankees’ first victory of the World Series. And the post-game interviews. As the blessed sports event reached Wagner-like lengths during the ESPN rehashing, I scooted close and put my head on his chest. He put an arm around my shoulders. Kissed the top of my head. Mulder was right; the world hadn't ended. Not then.

 

"Don't you go anywhere either, Mulder," I remember telling him.

 

"I won't," he'd promised, but he had.

 

                     ***

 

The frigid temperatures and endless snow in southern West Virginia might last another year, another decade, or another century. Alpha Colony - and the entire Northern Hemisphere - could experience years of drought, dark skies, and dangerous solar radiation. I had no way to tell Skinner when the nuclear winter would end. And, truly, I don't remember caring.

 

I'd thought of the acronyms I learned in medical school: cranial nerves and Some Lovers Try Positions They Cannot Handle and FRAMINGHAM for cardiovascular risk factors. I silently recited calculus equations and pi to the twentieth place. I named all the counties in California and calculated I'd visited every state in the US except Hawaii. I filled my head with any thought except that Mulder wasn't listening. In the dead of winter, Mulder hadn't listened in weeks. I saw patients and ate meals and continued drawing breath inside our cement bunker, but not thinking about Mulder dead or dying required effort every waking moment.

 

My patient, after a run-in with a runaway two-by-four, requested I suture his forehead with big stitches to leave a big scar. "To impress the ladies. Ladies like scars," he told me with a Texas drawl and a wicked grin. His long legs and work boots swung restlessly as he sat on my old exam table. His leather gloves and tool belt waited on my counter. "Since I couldn't bring my ride inland."

 

His ride had been a nuclear submarine. His buddies called him 'Captain Houston,' though the name on his duffle bag read 'Redman.' Houston had known Charlie, but said he'd seen neither of my brothers After. He'd docked in the rubble of Norfolk, where most of the submarine crews and other SEALs remained. Captain Houston had a farmer's tan that defied the endless winter, twinkling green eyes, and a wedding band that didn't look new to his hand.

 

"Impress which ladies?" I remember asking Houston as I put in normal, not Frankenstein-sized sutures. The pregnant prostitute continued her course of penicillin. To my knowledge, all other females were prepubescent or spoken for. "This is Alpha Colony, population: male."

 

"You're not male." He gave me another lazy smile. "Do you like scars, Dr. Scully?"

 

I clipped the final stitch and bandaged him up. "I have my own scars, and you've had a head injury." After I returned from the lab with an icepack, I said, "Pick a bed and hang around."

 

"You make my poor heart leap, Dr. Scully."

 

"I want to make sure you don't have a concussion,"

 

He sighed theatrically and took the Zip-lock bag. "You have ice," he said, sounding surprised. "Ice-cube ice. If you got ice, I know a strawberry patch not twenty miles from here. If summer ever comes again, I'm gonna find some tequila and a bottle of lime juice, get us some strawberries, and you and me, we're gonna get drunk on strawberry margaritas and tell stories about Baby Brother Charlie."

 

He slid off the exam table, unsteady on his feet. As I guided him toward the beds, I said, "So far today I've been propositioned by a wrist contusion, diffuse abdominal pain, a head cold, a lacerated thumb, two cases of VD, and an abscess. It's not even lunch."

 

Houston gave me another confident grin. "But I know about the strawberry patch."

 

I helped him onto an old hospital bed, and I returned to the exam room to get his jacket. A worn photograph threatened to slip from the inside breast pocket: a blonde woman my age in a WVU football jersey, and a girl about nine with a deep tan and startling green eyes. Mother and daughter stood in front of a farmhouse I bet was within twenty miles from the bunker and had a strawberry patch. I tucked the photo back in place.

 

Houston had another line as I brought his coat - something about hot summer nights and cold margaritas and comparing scars - but he checked the inside pocket of his coat for the photograph, first thing.

 

Inside my head, I named the bones of the human hand, and I didn't think of Mulder - dying alone, cold, afraid, desperate.

 

Most men in Alpha Colony had been elite, government-trained killers, not carpenters, not farmers, not engineers, not homesteaders. Sniper rifles posed no problem; handsaws and heifers tested their skills. The next man in the little reception area sported an abrasion on his palm like he'd tangled with a cheese grater. As I started to gesture to him, Skinner stalked into the clinic and directly into my exam room. My next patient sighed and sank back into his chair. I followed Skinner.

 

Skinner closed the exam room's door harder than necessary. "I want him out of my head," he informed me tersely. "Now."

 

Bloody gauze and tweezers and suture thread littered the counter. I still needed to take Houston his gloves and tool belt. "Mulder?" I asked stupidly. "He's alive? He's listening?"

 

Skinner nodded unhappily. "I have a colony to run. It's twenty below zero outside and I have people looking to me for their survival. I can't have your former partner telepathically following me around like a very distracting shadow. I'm not at his beck and call."

 

My heart pounded. I moved my mouth several seconds before I managed to get words out. "Okay. He wants..."

 

"I assume so. I assume Mulder's not interested in listening to me hunt for the key to the snowplow."

 

"Okay." I couldn't adjourn to my bedroom with the colony's leader at 11:35AM on a Thursday. Instead, I swallowed and locked the exam room door. "I need you to- Take off your-"

 

I toed off my Nikes and pulled my scrub top, and the long-sleeve thermal top, over my head. I heard Skinner take off his holster and unbuckle his belt. By the time I got to removing my bra, I had help.

 

His big hands felt cold on my breasts, but his lips were warm against my shoulder. The hard buttons of his shirt pressed against my bare back. "I'm not Fox Mulder's goddamned errand boy," Skinner said into my ear.

 

"I'm sorry," seemed the appropriate thing to say.

 

I heard him inhale, as if smelling my hair and skin. He outlined my hips. He cupped my breasts again, pushing the weight upward as he kissed my neck. His hand went down the front of my pants, beneath the long johns and panties. He'd done all these things last week, but less hurriedly and in darkness. As politely as any two nearly-nude former-coworkers could be. He'd kissed me, touched me, let me touch him, and lain back on my little bed and let me perform oral sex on him, a good compromise for all three people involved.

 

Now, I felt him shove my scrub pants and the clothing beneath them down. He put his fingers to his mouth, moistening them and, as I gasped, slid those fingers inside me. His boot nudged the inside of my foot, wanting my legs farther apart. He rubbed my clitoris as if insisting I enjoy it. Warm sparks spread from his fingertip, shaking my legs, coursing inside me. His other hand cupped a breast, pressing the nipple between his fingers. His breath quickened, and an impatient denim bulge pressed against my backside.

 

As soon as I became damp, his fingers stopped. His jeans unzipped. I kicked my pants aside and, beneath the harsh overhead light, bent forward against the exam table.

 

I felt his penis hard against me, and press inside, stretching the tender skin. He thrust slowly, a little at a time, as I grimaced. Each stroke gradually but firmly insisted my body open for his.

 

I gasped. "Oh my God."

 

He stepped closer and thrust again. And again - not rough, not careless. But deeper. I heard a primal, pleasured growl.

 

"Jesus." I dug my fingers into the far edge of the exam table. "Sir-"

 

"Stop?" he asked hoarsely.

 

"No." I reminded myself of the elasticity of the human vagina. With Mulder, I'd had more time, been more aroused. "Don't stop."

 

He inhaled and put both hands on my hips. And didn't stop.

 

He wasn't all the way inside me, but the thrusts became rhythmic. He leaned forward, kissing my neck and back, touching my breasts with a practiced confidence. I remember thinking, with the aid of a little surgical lubricant, Walter Skinner kept Sharon Skinner a happy woman.

 

I felt a familiar pressure inside my head.

 

"He's listening. Mulder's listening to me." The muscles relented, and I gasped as he sank deep inside me. "Oh God. Mulder's listening."

 

"Let him." He thrust faster, harder. He pushed me farther over the exam table so I had to tiptoe. Despite the discomfort, little points of pleasure began to gather and spark inside me again. "I imagined this," he said huskily. "Bending you over my desk. Pushing up your skirt. Taking pretty Agent Scully in my office."

 

At each stroke, I became increasingly certain my legs would never close properly again. Strands of hair stuck to my forehead, and I gripped the vinyl edge of the exam table desperately.

 

"Did Mulder have this pleasure?" Skinner wanted to know.

 

I don't remember what I answered, but it probably wasn't coherent.

 

"Come on, Scully," he ordered. "Come on - or do you only come for your professors and sociopaths?" With hot breath, he asked in my ear, "You've imagined it, too, haven't you?"

 

"Yes," I managed. Mulder clouded my head. A man's hand held my shoulder and my hip, and a man's body filled mine about an inch past capacity.

 

"Yes, sir," Skinner's voice prompted sternly.

 

"Yes, sir." My legs trembled. "Oh God. Oh my God."

 

"Come," he ordered again. "Come for me."

 

Panting, aching, flushed and shaking, I said, "I can't," and remembered to add, "Sir."

 

He withdrew. Before I could say anything, his open hand came down twice, hard, against my ass. The deep, punishing thrusts resumed. "Come on. Mulder knows what you like. I read your file; so do I. Come on. Come for me. I want pretty Agent Scully to come bent over a table, with my cock inside her."

 

Cold fusion exploded between my legs, rendering me incapable of thought or purposeful movement for eons. I felt a few desperate thrusts, so hard the exam table squealed forward. Skinner cried out twice and gave a long, satisfied, ragged exhalation.

 

A hand caressed my stinging bottom. He withdrew. I had a throbbing cavern where my vagina belonged.

 

A forceful exhale, and I heard his jeans zip. His belt buckle jangle.

 

I turned around. Skinner handed me the thermal undershirt I'd tossed on the counter. "He's gone," said, his voice calm but his chest still rising and falling rapidly. "Mulder. He's stopped listening."

 

I took my clothing without making eye contact. He was fully dressed, if flushed and sweaty. He even wore glasses. I wore socks.

 

Mulder had stopped listening to me, as well. The clock claimed seven minutes had passed.

 

"Good," I said, but wanted to know, "You read what file on me?"

 

He seemed momentarily befuddled by the afterglow of sex. "Cancerman kept a file." He leaned back against the counter and watched a corner on the floor across the room. "Jack Willis wouldn't tell him anything, but, with some persuasion, a professor at Berkeley and one of your med school instructors were quite candid."

 

Naked and flushed to my breasts, with my hair going all directions, I gaped at him. "That bastard."

 

"The file's burnt to a crisp in the middle of a radioactive wasteland," Skinner assured me. "I'm certainly not gonna kiss and-" He stopped, as if realizing there'd been no kiss.

 

Forgoing a bra, I jerked my thermal top over my head and busied myself untangling the bundle of panties, scrub pants, and long underwear. Succeeding, I stepped into my panties: the new ones Walter Skinner probably picked.

 

He studied his boots like a man unsuccessfully formulating a plan.

 

"Sir, could you..." I gestured to the old exam table located a foot from where it belonged.

 

"Yes." The rubber feet protested against the floor as he moved it back in place. He closed a metal drawer that had bounced open and, after studying the hinges, folded a stirrup back under the table. "There."

 

I got my pants on and reached for my tennis shoes.

 

Still managing not to look me in the eye, Skinner retrieved my bra and put it on the counter, beside Captain Houston's work gloves. "I think you have a patient waiting," he said neutrally.

 

I nodded. "He wasn't bleeding profusely. I'll see him in a minute."

 

"Okay," he said in the same voice. He shrugged on his shoulder holster and left, closing the exam room's door after him.     

 

I hid my bra inside a cabinet drawer. I wiped off with a gauze surgical dressing and threw the dressing in the trash. I cleaned up the remains of Captain Houston's sutures, and wiped down the exam table and the counter. I smoothed my hair. Washed my hands. The throbbing in my groin faded to a pleasant ache.

 

I remember thanking God Mulder remained alive.

 

Aside from answering my inquiries, the man with the scraped palm didn't say a word as I cleaned and dressed his wound. No compliments, no double-entendres, no grin. Captain Houston, as I checked his pupils before lunch, seemed equally subdued. Houston remained in Alpha Colony: first as a carpenter, and as a forager with Brewster, and eventually establishing trade routes between us and other colonies. Houston became one of Skinner's most trusted men, but I never did get a strawberry margarita.

 

                     ***

 

The bunker sprawled over 12,000 square feet of kitchen, cafeteria, meeting rooms, lounges, dorms and bathrooms, my medical clinic, an auditorium, the laundry, a dining hall, and the massive power plant and water treatment areas. The men had created a chapel in the unused TV repair shop, and turned the resort's vast exhibit hall into a gym and rec area. Skinner and Moovera took over the dorm closest to the medical clinic, replacing the bunks with hotel beds and dressers and sofas. Moovera called it the 'executive suite' and made a sign for the door. The dorm's lounge became Skinner's office. Twenty men slept in the other first floor dorm, and the rest in the second floor. Supplies - from batteries to canned goods to blankets - lined the halls and both levels of the otherwise useless communications area. Skinner's men had shelves built floor to ceiling in two empty dorms upstairs, ready for the foragers' findings.

 

I seldom entered some areas of the bunker, and Skinner hadn't required medical assistance. I'd seen him from a distance, but as for speaking or being within arm's length- A cup of hot coffee appeared in my clinic every morning, but for several days, Walter Skinner developed a preternatural ability to be where I was not.

 

As I returned from a late-night shower, the melody of Willie Nelson's _Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain_ drifted softly from my medical clinic, and yellow lamplight spilled into the hall. I hadn't left the oil lamp burning, and I hadn't asked the foragers for a guitarist.  

 

Skinner sat on the bare vinyl mattress of a hospital bed in the clinic, fully dressed. He had Dmitry's guitar and far better skill with it than his nephew. The lamplight glistened on the polished wood and cast shadows on the painted cinderblock wall. Skinner continued playing and didn't look up as I approached.

 

I hadn't known Walter Skinner could play guitar any more than I'd known he could quote Bible verses. He didn't sing - I would later learn he possessed roughly my singing talent - but his fingers moved expertly over the strings and frets. He hummed along, sometimes reciting a line of words in time with the music.

 

I stood in the doorway in my polar explorer outfit with a towel wrapped around my wet hair. Neither Walter Skinner nor Dmitry's guitar appeared in need of medical treatment. One of them smelled of alcohol, though, something Skinner supposedly forbid inside the bunker.

 

Skinner's fingers on the guitar's neck changed position. Johnny Cash's _Solitary Man_ began. I asked, "Sir, are you here to tell me Mulder's listening?"

 

His head shook 'no.' "Is he listening to you?"

 

"He was earlier. Not right now." I stepped toward him. Another wave of alcohol met my nose. My hand moved to fiddle with a necklace I didn't have anymore. "Why are you here?"

 

"I don't want you in the showers without someone on guard," he informed me, still watching his hands. "Tell me, and I'll clear the room and put a guard at the door. The men can use another washroom for twenty minutes."

 

"After all these months? It's the 'executive bathroom' - accessible only through my clinic or your bedroom. Besides, I was an FBI agent, and every man in this bunker except you is asleep right now," I pointed out. 

 

He glanced up; his stony expression indicated my argument fell on deaf ears.

 

He continued playing. Classic Johnny Cash became Lynyrd Skynyrd's _Free Bird_ , a time-honored litmus test for intoxicated regret.

 

"Why are you here?" I repeated.

 

He waited an entire verse before he said, "Right after she finished college, and eight weeks before our wedding, Sharon told me she was pregnant." He studied the guitar strings as he played. "This was not unexpected or unwelcome news. I was a shell-shocked former-Marine about to leave for Quantico. I thought having a baby, like getting married, would make me feel whole again. Still, it was 1979; she said she'd see a doctor as soon as we got married. We told my dying father, but no one else. At my father's wake, three weeks before the wedding, her pregnancy turned out to be ectopic. Cervical. It ruptured." 

 

"Many women with ectopic pregnancies report no warning symptoms before the rupture. In 1979, even if she'd seen a doctor-" I stopped, since Skinner hadn't looked up.

 

"She spent nine days in the hospital," he continued. "The first night and the whole next day, her parents wouldn't let me see her and her doctor wouldn't talk to me. I've never been more afraid. Or alone." He paused. "Her father told everyone her appendix ruptured. For years, her mother told people we couldn't have children because I'd had mumps as a boy." I saw a tired smirk. "I've never had mumps, Scully."

 

"Nor does having had mumps reliably predict male infertility," I said for no reason.

 

He exhaled. "Even now, After, a baby wouldn't be unwelcome news. We either live or we die, and a baby means life goes on. If you get pregnant, though, there's no other doctor to take care of you. Providence Colony has a vet. Ashland has an Army medic, a Black guy named Prichard. That's it for four hundred miles."

 

"My ovaries have no viable ova. Barring in vitro fertilization using donor eggs, I can't get pregnant," I said.

 

"What if you're wrong?"

 

"I'm a medical doctor; I'm not wrong."

 

He nodded, paused to flex his fingers, and continued playing softly in the lamplight.

 

An entire Roy Orbison song passed uninterrupted. I draped my towel over the rail of the hospital bed across from his and sat down on the mattress. "You're drunk, and at some point, you'll exhaust the Billboard Top 100 Hits of 1973 and have to tell me what's wrong."

 

"There's Linda Ronstadt."

 

"Could you spare both of us that embarrassment and tell me why you're here? I'm tired, I'm not pregnant, and I don't need a bathroom attendant."

 

Eight bars into Fleetwood Mac's _Rhiannon_ he stopped playing and confessed, "I hate having Mulder in my head."

 

"I know," I said, and I did. I counted Walter Skinner among the most stoic, private of men. Having anyone, even Mulder, rifling through his thoughts had to be torturous.

 

"You and Mulder are my friends, Dana. I was your boss. One of you is my beautiful friend, and the only woman I see who isn't filthy or desperate or broken. In Vietnam, we'd spend weeks on patrol, and I'd crave seeing a whole, healthy woman. Any whole, healthy woman - so I'd remember what they look like. Smell like. How soft their skin feels. You aren't just any woman, though." He held the guitar rather than played it. "Of course, thoughts go through my head. But I feel Mulder listening, and I realize he can hear those thoughts. About his girl. Not mine. You wouldn't be taking off your flannel pajamas and little fuzzy slippers if Mulder wasn't listening."

 

Maybe I should have assuaged his pride, but I didn't. No, I wouldn't be bent over my examination table, getting spanked and fucked and degraded - except I knew Mulder knew I'd liked it. Having Walter Skinner know as well seemed trivial. CGB Spender's file still pissed me off, though.

 

"I promised I'd protect you, keep you safe, but if Mulder's listening, I can't think," Skinner told me. "Five minutes after I left you, I found the snowplow key in my coat pocket. It must have been in there all morning."

 

I nodded. I got to shower with Mulder listening. Sometimes, I used half a bottle of shampoo, unable to remember whether I'd washed my hair.

 

"I was angry at Mulder, and not thinking clearly, and I acted-" Skinner paused to find the right word. "Impolitely. Toward you."

 

"Mulder and I exploit your body, on demand, and you want to apologize for being displeased about it?"

 

"Yes."

 

I crossed my arms. "Have you considered, besides being an Oxford-educated genius, Fox Mulder's among the best profilers the FBI had? Yes, he is listening to you. He's listening to me, too. Mulder's even subtly influencing our thoughts, our speech patterns - the way seeing certain paint colors subtly influences human behavior. Given all that, perhaps you and I acted exactly as he predicted."

 

A tic-tac-toe of lines formed on his forehead. "That's discomforting."

 

I shrugged. "You get used to it."

 

With movements well-lubricated by alcohol, Skinner set the guitar aside and slid to his feet. "If he ever listens again, I want it to be different. There are more beds in the hotel. There's no reason we can't bring one in here, for you."

 

"That would be nice," I answered. "Drink some water and get some sleep. Stop by in the morning for acetaminophen."

 

He stepped toward the hospital bed where I sat, and I thought for a moment he would kiss me goodnight. Instead, he said, "If we get a break in the weather, I'm going out with the foragers tomorrow. If there's anything you want for the clinic or yourself, make me a list. Include generic medication names and anything any clothing designer could think to call your size."

 

My list included Astroglide and, three days later, he brought it back. And used it expertly, with me, with Mulder listening, in one of the 'executive bathroom's' shower stalls late at night, and afterward in my new, four-poster, queen-sized bed.

 

                     ***

 

Director Walter Skinner is absent from dinner and doesn't reappear in the bunker until right before lights out. He doesn't owe me an account of his activities, and I don't get one. He comes to my bedroom - uninvited - tosses back the last of the bottle of Johnnie Walker, strips off his shirt, shoes, and weapons, collapses on the bed and, wonder of wonders, is asleep. He's pulled off the Band-Aids I put on his knuckles this morning but none of the scrapes look infected. From the smell of his clothes, whatever his whereabouts today, Dmitry was present.

 

Paranoia grows like ivy, pushing destructive little tendrils into my thoughts. I pack the old badges, the watch, and two changes of underwear and socks. A toothbrush. This time, I wear comfortable shoes, warm clothing, and a bra.

 

Skinner sleeps with his forehead on his arm. The bruise from earlier has darkened. He's in blue jeans, but bare-chested, with sock feet. In the lamplight, old shrapnel scars dot his back. I sit beside him in bed, watching. 1:00AM becomes 2:00. I pull the hammer back on my gun and tell him, "We're going for a drive."

 

Skinner continues snoring softly.

 

I jostle his shoulder, and he startles awake. He squints at me. "Dana? What's wrong, hun?"

 

"We're going for a drive," I repeat.

 

He puts his glasses on and looks at the bedside clock. "A drive?" he echoes blearily. "A drive where? What's-" His eyes stop on the pistol. His bare chest rises and falls.

 

"You're taking me to Mulder."

 

"To Mulder?" He doesn't seem fully awake. "What makes you think I know where Mulder is?"

 

I stand and gesture with the pistol for him to get up. "Get dressed."

 

"What are you doing, Scully?"

 

"Mulder's out there, and you're going to drive me to him."

 

Without arguing, he pulls on a t-shirt, and leaves a blue flannel shirt unbuttoned. He puts on his old boots and reaches for his tactical holster.

 

"Easy," I caution, keeping my weapon trained on him.

 

"You think I'm gonna shoot you?" He fastens the holster to his thighs and waist. He picks up the M16 as well, letting the rifle hang by its strap on his back. "Eighteen hours ago, I had my face between your legs, and now you think I'm gonna shoot you?"

 

I step closer, still aiming the pistol at him. "I think you lied to me."

 

"I've never lied to you. If I didn't tell you something, it was to your benefit."

 

"You didn't tell me Mulder's back. He said he needs us."

 

Skinner takes a slow breath. "Mulder hasn't come back, Dana, and he won't. And you wouldn't want him even if he did. He-"

 

"You lead this colony. You make the rules. You visit my bed," I say icily, "but you do not decide what I want."

 

"Someone's yanking Byers' chain. Maybe trying to lure me into bringing you out. Even if Mulder was waiting at the gate this time, what is it you want me to do? He's a murderer-"

 

"We're all murderers," I remind him.

 

"We're survivors. We all changed, but Mulder-" He shakes his head. "I promised him I'd keep you here, keep you safe. That includes keeping you safe from him."

 

"So Mulder is out there?"

 

"Are you hearing me, Dana? He's not. I didn't tell you about the radio transmission because I knew how you'd respond. If you had one glimmer of hope, you'd try to get to him."

 

"You're damn right." I fish a set of keys from his coat pocket and toss them. He catches them one-handed. "Let's go."

 

"You can put the gun down, Scully. I'll drive you to the border of Alpha Colony. We can check the entire outer fence, if you want. Mulder isn't standing at any gate, waiting on you or me."

 

"The west gate. He'll be there. He's listening, right now," I promise.

 

We walk out of the bunker side-by-side, past the guard, and to the road. I keep my pistol in my jacket pocket, pointed at him. Skinner's SUV is parked on the berm. Unless they're hauling something, the other men use motorcycles, 4-wheelers, or small trucks to conserve fuel. Skinner keeps his SUV from Before. He even changes the oil.

 

He starts the engine, and the last notes of a Peter Gabriel song play over the speakers. The headlights shine on a high metal maintenance shed, and Eric Clapton begins playing _You Look Wonderful Tonight_. Skinner turns the stereo down and moves an empty cassette case and several spare pistol magazines from the passenger seat. I take the pistol from my pocket and climb in.

 

"Drive."

 

He drives through the darkness, past silent homes and barns and fields. An ocean of stars washes across the night sky. The stereo clicks, static crackles, and the cassette plays Simply Red's _Holding Back the Years_. It's a mix-tape of love songs I can't imagine Walter Skinner liking. I turn on the dome light and check the empty case. In purple marker, the label reads 'For the long drive home. Love, Sharon.'

 

In the ashtray, I spot the remains of a joint. "Seriously? You're smoking marijuana?"

 

Without comment, Skinner turns the dome light off. He keeps his eyes on the road as he drives toward the western boundary of Alpha Colony.

 

Meet me in Purgatory, I think. Mulder, meet me in Purgatory. I think it as loudly as I possibly can.

 

In about ten minutes, Skinner stops on a narrow country road. The headlights illuminate a guard tower and the first of two tall, steel gates topped in razor wire. Cinderblock walls ten feet high flank the gates. Beyond the gates, I see the outlines of the dark shantytown.

 

"He's not there, Dana," Skinner says tiredly. "I'm not lying to you. There's no conspiracy. The truth is you're mine because you choose to be, and Mulder's never coming back for you. He may drop off bloody presents, but he's never coming back. Can we go back to bed?"

 

The pressure inside my head continues. "Keep going," I say impulsively. 

 

Skinner sucks in a disapproving breath but rolls down his window and nods to the guards. The first steel gate rolls open. His window rises. Skinner drives forward, stops, and hands me the M16 from the floorboards. After the first gate closes, the second slowly opens. He drives forward again, and we're outside the colony. In Purgatory. Headed for Hell.

 

Phil Collins. Walter Skinner's stereo plays a Phil Collins love song. It really is the end of the world.

 

"I hate every song on this tape," Skinner says, as if he's Mulder and also hears my thoughts. "But she made it for me, it's better than her Enya CD, and tomorrow would have been twenty-five years. Today, now. Today is twenty-five years. Yesterday evening, I drove up the mountain and watched the sunset - and yes, smoked some grass - and listened to this God-awful music."

 

I open my mouth but never formulate any response. Congratulating the grieving widower who had his face between my legs eighteen hours ago and whom I currently had at gunpoint, seems impolite.

 

"You like math, Scully," he says. "On the mountaintop yesterday, God and I discussed math. Eighteen out of twenty-five years: that's roughly two-thirds. I've spent one-third of our marriage without her now. How is that possible? How have so many years passed since I accidentally recorded the NFL draft over her stupid cooking show, or spent hours trying to discover some non-existent noise she claimed her car made?"

 

The last of Purgatory's tents and shacks ends. Beside the road, a herd of whitetail deer startle and flee into the trees. Seconds later, a pack of feral dogs pursue the deer.

 

"I understand, Dana," Skinner assures me. "I'd die for one more Christmas at my in-laws' house, even though I used to pray the Bureau would call and I'd have an excuse to leave. I want wet stockings hanging in the shower, and her using my razor, and twenty damn decorative pillows on the bed. I'd take a fight over a credit card bill for 8,523 American dollars for one dress. One dress. How can an adult woman not know the value of a British pound? All my suits together didn't cost $8,523. I'd take an angry, tearful call at work informing me we had a dinner reservation and she's waited in the restaurant, alone, long enough to drink an entire bottle of wine. I'm a bastard and she's divorcing me, but she's too drunk to drive and I have to come get her."

 

I stare at him. Skinner stares at the windshield.

 

"I'd even sit in the marriage counselor's office and not talk as she complains to the shrink that I don't talk," Skinner continues. "It doesn't matter if she can't have children. It doesn't matter if she's filed for divorce again and started sleeping with some CEO. It doesn't matter if she's comatose and doesn't know I'm there. It doesn't even matter she's dead. I love her. Dana, I understand. Eighteen out of fifty-two years-old: that reduces to one-third of my life, and not nearly enough."

 

He slows the SUV and switches off the headlights. The October moon is full. I see the edges of the road, the foreboding shadow of the trees. He crests a hill and stops, letting the vehicle idle in the middle of the road. We aren't more than a few miles outside Alpha Colony. Dry leaves rustle and crickets chirp.

 

The pressure behind my forehead continues. "Keep going."

 

"We're sitting ducks. Where is it you want me to go? Mulder's not here. I'll drive you to the east gate, if you want, and the north and south gates. He's not there."

 

"He's listening," I protest.

 

"Because he can, but he's not Mulder anymore. Whatever the aliens did to him, now he's a brilliant, telepathic sociopath who, somewhere in his subconscious, has a memory of loving you. Your Mulder is gone, like she's gone. Our world is gone. Now, either we live as best as we can, or we die. That simplifies the choices."

 

I scan the valley. Like the stars, the darkness goes on forever. Along the tree line, glowing yellow eyes appear, watching.

 

On faith, I grab my pack, open the door, and get out. Skinner dives across the passenger seat. I evade his grasp. He shoves the SUV into park and runs after me. He catches my wrist and drags me back to the vehicle. "Are you insane?" he demands. "He's not here. Get in the car."

 

Beyond a patch of trees, thirty feet away, headlights come on, blinding me. Instantly, I'm on my belly on the pavement in front of the SUV, with Skinner on top of me. Asphalt scrapes my palms. His breath is white in the autumn night air. I have my pistol, but I left the rifle in the SUV.

 

Footsteps approach.

 

"Get behind me. Use the vehicle as cover," he whispers, and shifts so I can roll away. "Get in and drive. Just go. Head for the gate. Radio Moo for help but get out of here. You're what they're after, not me. Go."

 

Engine still running, the SUV's stereo plays _Love is a Battlefield_.

 

A tall, slim man's silhouette moves into the headlights. He takes two more steps, and I'm on my feet. I know the outline of his shoulders, the tilt of his head. "Mulder?"

 

"Scully, don't," Skinner yells from behind me, and I hear him scramble up. One Glock slides from his holster. "Get back!"   

 

"Mulder?" I repeat.

 

Mulder takes another step toward me. His face is expressionless, but I feel him inside my head, listening. I start toward him.

 

Skinner puts his hand on my shoulder, trying to stop me. "Don't-"

 

I see a pistol glint in the headlights. I hear a shot, and Skinner's palm leaves my shoulder. I turn. Walter Skinner lays beside the SUV with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. He still holds the Glock in his right hand, but his fingers slowly loosen. A dark red pool spreads to his shoulders, and those warm brown eyes fade to black.

 

"No," I hear myself say, crouching beside him. "No, no, no."

 

The 80's power ballad still plays on the stereo.

 

"Why?" I scream at Mulder. "Why did you do that?"

 

Mulder steps closer and looks at me curiously.

 

My insides shake, my chest aches, and tears stream from my nose and eyes. "We're not monsters," I yell at him, standing up.

 

I wait for Mulder to explain. To say Skinner lied. To say something. Instead, Mulder continues contemplating me. After a moment, he walks toward me. He picks up my backpack from the pavement, takes the M16 from the front seat, and walks back to the headlights. An engine turns over. Five seconds later, a green Jeep pulls up beside me, half on, half off the road, with Mulder at the wheel.

 

"Are you fucking mute?" I scream at him as my nose drips. "Or just insane? Why did you kill Skinner? He's our friend. Why?" I demand. "What is it you want?"

 

Mulder's mouth moves uselessly a few times.

 

I look at Skinner's SUV. The keys are in the ignition and the engine's running. I could get in and drive. I could radio for help, but Skinner's right: if I'm not his woman, I'll quickly be someone else's.

 

The yellow eyes continue watching from the trees and pairs of large red eyes appear, too high above the ground to be human. I hear movement in the darkness, something large skittering forward. 

 

Clutching my pack and gun, I climb into the Jeep. Mulder puts the transmission in gear and turns the wheel, making a circle in the grass and heading west, away from Alpha Colony. I look back and see the SUV parked at the top of the hill, doors open, dome light on, stereo still playing the old mixtape. Skinner's body lies beside the open passenger-side door.

 

Skinner held the Glock in his hand, but Mulder had to draw. Even psychic, even able to subtly influence Skinner's behavior, Mulder shouldn't have had the advantage.

 

Twenty-five years, I think. An October wedding with a bride who should have been pregnant and a shell-shocked Marine trying to feel whole again. I didn't doubt he loved me, but I wonder if he couldn't face another tomorrow without her. Always 'her.' For all his strength and scars, he couldn't withstand the pain of saying her name aloud.

 

The soft top of the Jeep is rolled back. The moon glows and the cold wind blows the tears back from my eyes, into my hair, as we drive. "Was Skinner going to kill you?" I ask Mulder aloud. "Did you hear him think that?"

 

Without looking away from the road, Mulder shakes his head side-to-side.

 

"Did Skinner think, if you took me, there's no point to living?" I ask. "He'd rather be with Sharon? Did you hear him think that?"

 

This time, Mulder nods jerkily. An edge breaks off my heart and falls into the abyss inside me, aching all the way to the bottom.

 

                     ***

 

The old military cargo truck's wheels hummed against the asphalt as Skinner drove us along the edge of Purgatory. The sun had shone for a solid week, so laundry hung on lines to dry and livestock grazed. Some optimistic souls had vegetable plants sprouting in greenhouses and beneath cold frames. Men carried water and fed chickens, and a few children played. Away from the bunker, Alpha Colony resembled a subarctic agrarian village in the 1920's. With guns. Lots of guns and barricades and razor wire and guard towers. As supplies from Before dwindled and decayed, outsiders became desperate. Despite the fortifications, a band of rovers got past the outer fence two days earlier. They didn't make it far, but they did get in. Unless Skinner built the Great Wall of China around Alpha Colony, they'd get in again, too.

 

Purgatory lay outside the western boundary of Alpha Colony. Past the gates, I saw liquor bottles and empty food cans and other trash strewn on the roadside. Dogs roamed a shantytown of tents and shacks and houses where cardboard replaced broken windowpanes. One man sprawled in a sagging Barcalounger, outside, looking intoxicated. A menacing-looking man wearing a bandana around his neck stood with his dirty fingers through the chain-link fence, watching. Two Alpha guards with machine guns watched back from the guard tower. Purgatory contained the sinners: either people Skinner threw out or people he wouldn't let in. I'd asked Skinner why they didn't leave; he told me Purgatory was better than Hell. Hell was everything from Alpha Colony south to Roanoke, and southwest to Ashland. After Ashland and Providence Colony came the Badlands. Groups at the edge of the Badlands had names - Kansas City, Falls Colony - but civilization faded at Ashland, tinted Providence Colony, and could be seen only in the rearview mirror by Missouri and Kansas.

 

I studied the gates as Skinner eased the truck to a stop outside the medical school. Even from a hundred feet away, I felt the men at the fence watching. Boots hit the pavement as the four foragers riding in the back of the truck jumped down. "Cover your hair," Skinner reminded me.

 

I tucked my hair under an olive drab cap, opened the creaky door, and climbed down from the truck's cab. I wore someone's fatigue jacket rather than my own winter coat. Skinner had insisted and, going so close to the border, I hadn't argued. A woman's presence endangered the entire group, he'd said - the same response I got if I asked to pick my own underwear and scalpels.

 

We'd been house-to-house in the town, through storage buildings and offices, car trunks and ambulances and first aid kits, searching for medical supplies. Medications I passed out like Tic Tacs last year I guarded like a leprechaun with her gold. Doctor's offices, pharmacies, clinics and vet's offices: anything not burned or demolished by riots and quakes had been ransacked After or left to Mother Nature's frigid, damp fury for two years. We'd been through the medical school once, taking the low-hanging fruit. Today we picked over the ruins.

 

The man with the bandana around his neck still watched me. I shifted my arm, feeling the comforting bulge of my pistol beneath the jacket. Two weeks earlier, in town, I'd had to forcibly check the amorous advances of a newcomer to Alpha Colony, getting bruised in the process. Skinner dealt with the man, and I started carrying my gun again.

 

Beneath the beard and the dirt, I couldn't tell if the same man now stood at the fence. He blew me a sarcastic kiss.

 

"I see him. The guards see him. He's not getting in here," Skinner assured me. "Go do some shopping, Dr. Scully."

 

I canvassed the labs and clinic area, and the library. As I pointed, the foragers filled boxes and carried them out to the old military truck. I took a microscope, a small autoclave, Petri dishes, beakers and pipettes and an old centrifuge.

 

Skinner stayed with the truck, taking the boxes as we passed them up. He frowned at a new exam table, and frowned again at an OB/GYN table, so I went to ask before I had the foragers disassemble and carry out a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer in questionable repair.

 

I found the Vietnam-era truck unattended, but spotted my former AD outside the chain-link fence, setting down a case of baby formula and two boxes of canned food. He returned to the guard tower to fetch a huge box of diapers, and handed them to Julie, the woman who'd infected a dozen male members of Alpha Colony with chlamydia. She'd never returned for me to deliver her baby, and now she looked pregnant again.

 

"You weren't supposed to see that," Skinner said as I met him inside the inner gate. He imitated Dmitry. "I'm being, like, the best uncle ever, man."

 

I nodded toward the prostitute. "Is Dmitry the father?"

 

Skinner put his hands on his hips, looking uncomfortable. "Who knows? She's trouble, Dmitry's an idiot, and I'm his errand boy."

 

I studied Julie: her long dirty blonde hair, her glazed eyes. Skinner put his hand on my back, steering me away from the gate. A crowd had begun to form. A freakishly tall, bald, albino man stood beside the man wearing a bandana. The drunk sat up in his Barcalounger. A man's face appeared in a nearby dirty window with features too smooth to be human.

 

"Why is she out there?" I asked.

 

Skinner answered curtly, "Because she didn't like the rules in here." After a deep breath, he told me, "I gave her every chance, Scully. I swear I did. She won't show up for work. She steals. She instigates fights between lonely Green Berets and Secret Service agents who are carrying fully-automatic weapons in our dining hall. I don't like her being out there, but I'm not her father and I can't make her sober up."

 

"I have a case of prenatal vitamins on the truck."

 

He nodded before I even asked. "I'll take a bottle to her."

 

The foragers stood at the back of the truck, ready to hoist up the first section of the GC-MS.

 

"Dr. Scully," a woman's drunken voice yelled from behind me.

 

"No." Skinner's hand propelled me forward. "I'm not running a charity to benefit her, and you're damn sure not going out there. I'll take her the vitamins."

 

"Dr. Scully!" another woman called, sounding desperate but not intoxicated. The chain link fence rattled. "Please. Are you Dr. Scully?"

 

"If you get in the truck, I'll walk whatever you want out to her," he promised. "If you want to examine her, she can come in under guard, but she's going right back out again."

 

I evaded Skinner's hand and turned back. Julie stood holding the gate, but a second woman, a heavily pregnant brunette, was with her.

 

"Ma'am, back away," a guard warned them.

 

"He said to ask for you," the pregnant brunette woman called. "Dr. Scully at Alpha Colony. He said you could deliver the baby." She held up her wrist. "I have his watch."

 

"Who is she?" I asked Skinner, who'd followed me back to the gate.

 

"She's not local. I've never seen her before."

 

I estimated the woman's age at thirty. She was a tall, pretty, dark-haired Caucasian in a dirty maternity dress and flip-flops, though the temperature hovered near fifty. She watched me with pleading brown eyes.

 

Ten yards to her right, the bandana man's lips moved, mouthing "Fucking cunt," at me.

 

A pistol appeared in Skinner's hand, aimed at the man's head. The man cursed and stepped back from the fence.

 

The tall albino remained, and the face with the oddly muted brow ridge and nose still watched from the dirty window. In the trees, yellow eyes glowed. Beside where the bandana man had stood, the air past the chain-link fence distorted around an invisible human shape.

 

"Who said to ask for me?" I called to the woman.

 

The fence shook and her eyes rolled back. She dropped to the asphalt, convulsing. A crowd formed around her. The albino man tried to force a spoon into her mouth.

 

At Skinner's order, our guards opened the first gate. "Get back," Skinner ordered everyone outside, his pistol still raised. He yelled at me to stay put. The guards tracked the crowd with machine guns as Skinner and two foragers opened the outer gate. Unsure how to pick her up, the foragers grabbed her wrists and dragged her inside. Her flip-flops remained in Purgatory.

 

As soon as the inner gate closed, I had my finger on her pulse. While she writhed on the road, I put my ear to her abdomen.

 

"Does she have a pre-existing seizure disorder?" I yelled at Julie. My hat fell off, and my hair tumbled around my face. The crowd of men and man-like creatures gathered at the fence again, watching me hungrily and ignoring the guards' orders to step back.

 

Julie stared through the gate with dead eyes as my new patient went rigid, moaning like something damned. I took off my coat and passed it to one of Skinner's men, who put it under her head. "What the hell's wrong with her, Dr. Scully?"

 

Her hands and feet looked puffy, even for a woman in her third trimester. "Eclampsia," I answered. "She's dying. I need to deliver this baby. Now."

 

I saw Skinner glance at the military transport truck. It had a top speed of about fifty miles per hour, and I had half the medical school's library loaded in the back. "Can you do it here?"

 

I hadn't known if I could perform a successful C-section, period. Despite what Alpha Colony believed, I was not a highly-skilled surgeon, nor a general practitioner, nor particularly good with patients with a heartbeat. "I-I- I can't do it while she's seizing."

 

Skinner nodded he understood. "Can you save her, or only the baby?"

 

I didn't have a stethoscope with me. Or clamps. Retractors. I didn't even have a scalpel, but Skinner probably had a pocketknife.

 

"Dana?" Skinner prompted, still holding his pistol. "Can you save the mother or not?"

 

He would have shot her; I know he would. If I'd asked, he would have put a gun to that nameless woman's head and pulled the trigger. He would have killed the bandana man at the fence, too.

 

"I want to try," I decided.

 

My gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer got left in front of the medical school, and the woman, unconscious, got hoisted into the back of the truck. I heard Skinner on the radio up front, telling Moovera to have another truck meet us.

 

The old engine strained and the tires flew over the road. The men in the back of the truck with me diverted the falling equipment and boxes of books.

 

I still couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat.

 

The woman's muscles tensed again for a few seconds before another convulsion began. Her lips became blue and her eyes rolled back. One of Skinner's men crossed himself. I checked her eyes after the seizure passed Both pupils looked blown. I couldn't get any reflexive response. She's dead, I remember telling myself. She's brain dead and the baby's small but viable. Borrow a pocket knife. Do it.

 

Opening a cadaver isn't surgery on an anesthetized patient, but each cut was still precise, planned. Cutting into a living body with reckless disregard for its life, for its pain: I couldn't.

 

As we bounced along in the back of the truck, I saw the woman's wrist. Her wrist had swollen until the black watchband cut into her skin. She wore a silver Omega De Ville watch with a cracked face. I remembered Mulder buying the watch in Detroit after Emily died and I shot Robert Modell's sister.

 

A horrible shiver passed through me.

 

The truck stopped, sending us sliding forward. In an instant, the pregnant, comatose woman and I were in the back of Moovera's gray Toyota pick-up truck, headed for the bunker. Moovera kept the pick-up truck's accelerator on the floor. He didn't appear likely to stop and pass a scalpel and retractors back to me. I squinted into the cold wind as my hair blew wildly. And I waited.

 

Seven minutes and a quick prayer to St. Luke later, I performed a classic rather than Misgav Ladach incision, through the dermis and muscle, until I visualized the fetus. Not the latest technique, but the one they taught me in med school, and the one I could do the fastest. Despite the lack of anesthesia, the woman didn't move.

 

The baby didn't move, either. Regardless of what I did, she wouldn't breathe. Her heart wouldn't beat. I tried and tried, but she wouldn't breathe. I think I tried for an eternity.

 

"Dana," a familiar man's voice said softly.

 

I looked up. A woman's body lay on my surgical table with her distended abdomen cut open. Her head lolled and her arm hung limply. An oddly blue, still, tiny newborn rested on a towel on the counter. I sat on a metal stool in the corner, holding a broken wristwatch. Familiar men in fatigues and flannel clustered outside the door, looking concerned, but none of those men was Mulder.

 

I wasn't gloved or masked. Nothing was sterile. Gelatinous blood pooled beneath the table and goose bumps covered my arms.

 

Walter Skinner looked at the baby and folded the towel to cover it. He didn't bother checking the woman's pulse. "Come on, Dana. Come with me. I'll have someone clean- Clear the bodies."

 

"You can't," I said numbly. "She had Mulder's watch," I told him. "The mother. She had Mulder's wristwatch." I held it up to him, like Exhibit A. Blood covered my hands. My shirt. "I didn't save Mulder's baby."

 

Skinner started to take the watch, but I didn't let go. The watch wasn't engraved, but I didn't remember Mulder's watch being engraved.

 

The door closed, and Skinner bent down eye level with me. "You cannot know that."

 

"I can check the blood types. I know Mulder's blood type. He was listening to you, to us-" I took a painful breath. "While he was with her." I nodded to the table. "He sent that woman here. He knew she was sick, and I- I didn't save-" My throat closed off. If Moovera had been present, he could have accurately diagnosed shock.

 

"If this was Mulder's child, why was the mother alone at our gate? You saw what's out there. Where is Mulder? Why would he do this? To her? To you?" Skinner's words left his mouth but fell short of my ears. "Dana, stop. You did everything you possibly could for that woman."

 

I remember telling him, "I didn't," but I don't remember how I got from surgery to my bedroom next door. I watched Skinner clean my hands and forearms with a warm, wet washcloth, but as if I floated above the room and looked down at us. Two sets of dark red footprints - one a small woman's tennis shoes and one set a large man's work boots - led from the door to the bed. He wiped them away.

 

"What if the stories of Mulder are true?" I asked as he pulled off my tennis shoes. Skinner tossed them across my bedroom; the Nikes landed in my trashcan with two thumps. "The ship made him different. Not merely psychic, but less human. He shot that old man in the dining hall. You saw him. What if he's still like that?"

 

"I don't know," Skinner said, sounding tired. He pulled my ruined shirt over my head and had me peel off my blue jeans. My bloody clothes and long johns followed my shoes into the trash, as if he wanted nothing from today to exist tomorrow. The cool air bit my bare skin. "I do know you don't pay a prostitute with a watch these days, Scully. Cigarettes, alcohol, food. Drugs. Something valuable she can trade. Not a watch."

 

"Maybe she's not a prostitute. Maybe he-" I swallowed. "Maybe they're lovers."

 

"If that's the case, again, where is Mulder? To know a woman's carrying your child- Male instincts kick in that defy reason and certainly don't include abandoning her at our gate."

 

I didn't argue with Skinner, but I knew something of that male instinct, at least when it came to me. The scenarios tumbled in my head. I tried to balance each equation of what I knew of Mulder with what I had witnessed. In the end, the math factored out to me failing. I couldn't save the woman, but if I'd C-sectioned her in front of the medical school - done what needed to be done - I'd be holding a live baby right now. I'd have done something for Mulder in return for all he sacrificed for me.

 

"Where is Mulder?" Skinner's voice echoed inside my mind. Three more times in the past nine months, Walter Skinner had appeared at my bedroom door, awkward, distracted, and wanting Fox Mulder out of his head. Not unwilling, but unhappy about our silent partner. Each time, I did it because I thought Mulder couldn't come back. This was the only way he could touch me.

 

Mulder wasn't in Antarctica. Or marooned alone on some island. Mulder could touch someone, and that pregnant someone could reach me.

 

Again, time tangled and frayed until I noticed Skinner again. He sat on the edge of the bed and I had a soft blanket around me. I don't remember him sitting down or wrapping me in the blanket. 

 

His hand took mine. "She was some pregnant woman with some man's wristwatch. She could have escaped rovers. She could even have been a ploy to get you outside the gates. It's not Mulder's watch and that little girl wasn't Mulder's child."

 

"Do you believe that?"

 

"For your sake, I want to believe it." He exhaled. "I have three really good sleeping pills left. One of them has your name on it tonight." He started to get up. "Where are your pajamas? Which drawer?"

 

"Stay." The word left my mouth before consultation with my higher brain. "Please."

 

I lay down, wearing my bra and panties. The pillow beneath my head sighed wearily. I moved back, creating space for a second person in my bed. Skinner studied me. His lips moved, "Okay." I heard his holster loop over the back of a chair and his boots thump down beneath my bed.

 

I was the vast darkness between the stars and the void between electrons. I understood what Skinner told me, last winter: thinking a baby would make him feel whole again. Except I couldn't have a baby. Not even a dead prostitute's baby. The gray bastards took everything: my family, my partner, my children, my future. My world. I survived to battle tetanus and sepsis with my ever-dwindling supply of medication and supplies - too arrogant to know I was beaten - while I waited for a man who would never come back. Or, if he ever did, was no longer the Mulder I loved.

 

"You have to let go, Scully," Skinner said, and took the broken watch I didn't realize I still held. He set the wristwatch in the table beside my bed, where I could see it. He lay down, facing me.

 

Despite our arrangement, I seldom saw him so close. Without his glasses, his brown eyes seemed warmer, larger. I saw a few gray hairs in his eyebrows, and where his nose had been broken, and the thin line of an old scar on his chin. I knew every story that went with Mulder's scars, and so few of Walter Skinner's.

 

I put my hand on his jaw, and I kissed him.

 

"He's not listening," Skinner said, pulling back. He was right. Mulder wasn't listening. Not to me and not to Skinner. "What are you doing?"

 

I didn't know, so I couldn't tell him. I wanted to feel whole again. To wake up to a life I recognized instead of a daily battle against inevitable death. "I want you to make love to me. Only you."

 

"Scully, you're not in any condition to issue that invitation. I- I'm right here." His body felt strong and solid. Warm. He stroked my hair, caressed my back. His fingers trailed down my arm. "Try to sleep."

 

I kissed him again, opening my mouth. Guiding his hand from my forearm to my breast. "You. Walter. Make love to me."

 

His thumb moved across the lace fabric covering my nipple. Because of the kind of man he was, he still asked, "Why?"

 

"Does it matter? In all this wreckage, does it matter?"

 

After a second's consideration, he said softly, "No."

 

The lights went out. 10:00PM. Bedtime. We'd arrived at the medical school at mid-morning. An entire day, and all I had to show for it were two dead bodies in my surgery and a man who'd kill for me in my bed.

 

As he kissed me, his hands covered my breasts and touched between my legs. I closed my eyes. I felt my bra unfasten and my underwear slide down. I heard his shirt buttons open. His belt and jeans unfasten. He kissed me in a way that felt certain. Purposeful. Insistent. His body inside mine made me feel something, even if it hurt.

 

"Harder," I told him, and opened my legs, surrendering completely.

 

He thrust harder: skin slick with sweat, muscle straining, breath hot against my skin. His hands over mine. He whispered in my ear as his hips moved. So tight. Like the Vietnamese girls. Did I like that? That big cock? Come for him. Come on, pretty Agent Scully.

 

I wanted so badly for Mulder to listen, but only God looked on, judging me as I begged and convulsed and invoked His name.

 

I woke the next morning, alone in my bed and my head, and resolved it wouldn't happen again. I wouldn't engage in sex with a man I didn't love, and I wouldn't use Skinner as a surrogate for sex with a man I did love.

 

Within months, I'd failed at both resolutions.

 

Months and months later, Dmitry let a secret slip. The morning after Skinner spent the night with me, Dmitry - visiting Purgatory for reasons best left unexamined - noticed his uncle's SUV stop at the west gate. He saw Walter Skinner get out, wait for the gates to open, and walk directly to the shack where the dirty bandana man slept. Dmitry heard a single shot. He saw his uncle return inside the gates, get back in the SUV, and drive away, presumably arriving back at the bunker in time to deliver my morning coffee.

 

                     ***

 

There's not enough oxygen in the cold, damp darkness. Air should be seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen, and the rest argon and trace gasses: neon and methane and ozone. As Mulder drives through the night and I try to breathe, I decide Earth's atmospheric gasses have shifted.

 

Mulder doesn't speak. He doesn't look away from the road. He's listening, though.

 

Despite my coat, I shiver in the Jeep's passenger seat, nose dripping, head pounding. Wind blows my hair into my eyes, a thousand stings like little whips. On the highway, abandoned cars have been pushed onto the berm and into the median, making a clear lane. The blackness is everywhere. No streetlights, no porch lights. The green interstate signs are dark. The world is barren, as dead as the moon overhead. We pass a sign welcoming us to Virginia. The starry muddle of the Milky Way arches across the sky, menacing rather than wondrous.

 

Mulder wears dark jeans and a mottled beige combat jacket similar to mine. He hasn't shaved in a few days. His dark hair is a style popular in Alpha Colony: a DIY buzz cut with clippers set to number four. There's a scar on his cheekbone and no watch on his wrist.

 

He turns his head enough to see me in his peripheral vision. The Jeep slows. He looks at me again, and pushes his finger against my shoulder, the way he'd check for a corporeal being. I think my molecular density surprises him.

 

Mulder stops the Jeep on the empty interstate. Aside from the idling engine, the countryside is silent.

 

Moving cautiously, Mulder reaches for my hand. He watches his fingers as he pinches me hard. I see him wince with me. He's listening so intently my head throbs.

 

He worries his lip. Inhales. Clears his throat. He asks rustily, "Are you real, Scully?" I think he's afraid to hear my answer. His face turns, looking at me from a different angle. He touches my jawbone, stroking the fine hair near my earlobe. "Am I dreaming? Or dead? I see you. I feel you. Are you real?"

 

I sniff and tell him, "I'm real." The pressure inside my head increases to torturous. A warm trickle leaves my nose. I touch my face. My fingers come away bloody. "Stop," I plead.

 

The pressure lessens but the crying headache continues. I feel empty, shaky, spent. Freezing cold. I fumble for the roll of toilet paper in my pack. My pistol gets in the way, so I stash it in one of the Jeep's cubbyholes, atop a stack of Elvis CD's. I press a wad of tissue to my nose. The blood seeps and little pieces of my soul seem to bleed away.

 

I look up. Mulder's out of the Jeep. He opens the passenger door and stands close. He listens gently now, like a lover's touch. He reaches toward my face, and without meaning to, I flinch back. Instead of my cheek, he touches my hair, his expression uncertain as he slides his fingertips down the long, tangled strands. I watch his hand, as does he. His touch, his presence, does nothing to stop the shaking inside me.

 

He pushes my jacket aside and puts his hand on my breast. I smack him away and remember my gun. This time, I tell rather than request, "Mulder, stop."

 

He steps back. "I frighten you." He sounds surprised.

 

"You shot AD Skinner," I remind him, and wipe my nose again. "He's dead. He did nothing except try to protect me and stay alive and find some solace in this Hell, and he's lying dead on the road. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere, at night, with you acting insane and grabbing my breast. You're going to give me a cerebral hemorrhage, listening so hard. Yes, you frighten me."

 

As Mulder speaks, he seems to have to work up to it. "Scully," he says, trying the name aloud again. "You know phantom limb pain? I don't have long hair. I don't have breasts. My face is-" He touches his scruffy jaw. "If I can see my hand touching you and listen to you feel something I can't possibly feel, I- I want to believe you're real."

 

I stare at him in the light seeping sideways from the headlights. I'm not sure killing Skinner even registers with Mulder as wrong. As having happened. Mulder has no facial expressions. His movements seem overly efficient, and his stillness, too still. His hazel eyes study me. "You're real," he repeats less emptily. "Are you real?"

 

"I'm real, Mulder." My nose has stopped bleeding. I gesture for him to come close again. I touch the three days' growth of beard on his face and the scar on his cheek. "Feel me touching you. I'm real. I'm cold and exhausted and frightened, and you killed AD Skinner. There's something watching us from the trees, and I don't know how to survive out here. We need to get someplace safe for the night. Do you understand?"

 

He nods.

 

Mulder reaches in the back seat, pushing aside duffle bags and a lantern and tools. I see a hand-held radio. He pulls out a wool Army blanket and drapes the blanket over me. Of all ludicrous things, he fastens my seatbelt.

 

Once Mulder's back in the driver's seat, he stops to look at me again, as if reassuring himself. I reach from beneath the blanket and take his hand from the gearshift. His skin is warm, and his hand familiar.

 

"Drive," I tell him.

 

He puts the Jeep in gear with his hand over mine. The autumn wind whips my hair again, and the tires hum against the uneven highway. I think of what Skinner said about being a sitting duck, driving out here at night. The foragers and traders told stories of a ruined land stripped of all humanity, and of which I am now a part. Alpha Colony won't let Mulder in. No colony will let Mulder in, and I'm not leaving Mulder.

 

I steal a glance at his profile. What the hell happened to you, Mulder, I think.

 

The high-beam headlights shine a hundred yards into the unknown darkness. Hell looms all around us, patiently, calmly licking its lips. Ahead though, a dark, dented sign reads 'Virginia is for Lovers.' Mulder keeps the gas pedal to the floor and holds my hand like a lifeline. It's the end of the world. He might be a brilliant, telepathic sociopath, but where else would Mulder be except with me?

 

He must hear me think it. As he slows to take an exit ramp into a forest, Mulder glances at me and, after a second as if to remember how, he grins.

 

I feel a reckless rush of dopamine and serotonin. Oxytocin, too: a neurotransmitter key in pair bonding. Mulder's alive, and he's real, and - somewhere inside the damaged exterior - he's still Mulder. Relentless. Passionate. Sometimes clever beyond comprehension and maddening beyond words, but mine. My lonely guy in the basement who believes we are not alone.

 

Twenty minutes later, after a rutted dirt road through trees and overgrown brush, and driving through a creek, Mulder stops at a shuttered little building deep in the forest. I follow him inside an old Indian Guides cabin. Narrow bunks line two of the walls, and an empty stone fireplace bisects the third wall. The single room smells musty and damp, like the earth. Mulder doesn't open the shutters or light the fireplace. He hangs a kerosene lantern from a hook on one of the ceiling beams. Still without speaking, he pulls a mattress from a bunk to the floor, throws the Army blanket over it, and begins stripping off his clothing.

 

I see more scars - old cut marks on his forearms, one on his chest, a rough scar on his shoulder - before he kisses me. My clothes vanish into some mystical vortex, and I'm on my back with my arms around him. His face is rough, and his body hard and lean. My beautiful, precious, dangerous Mulder. I smell his skin: musky, masculine. Run my fingers through what remains of his hair. He doesn't wear my little cross necklace, but I don't care.

 

I don't care about colonization. I don't care about being safe, or even about being alive tomorrow morning. As Mulder touches me, makes love to me, I don't care about Skinner, even, or that a forensic examination of my vagina would reveal DNA evidence from two different men. God can judge me later. Right now, Mulder loves me desperately, as if he won't ever get another chance. The sounds of the forest surround us, and he surrounds me. Primal. Visceral. Alive, and celebrating survival amid the ruin.

  

He doesn't speak, and I have no need to speak aloud to him. He's inside me, listening. For a while, I'm astride him, with one of his hands on my breast and the other holding my hip, urging me on. He watches me in the lamplight. Despite the cold, a sheen of sweat covers our skin. I feel my orgasm building, and explode, sending me soaring into the heavens. Then I'm on my back, with Mulder's hands over mine, holding me down as he thrusts roughly. I'm still flying and, seconds later, so is he - to a wonderful place where we're not monsters.

 

                    ***

 

In the Hoover Building's cafeteria, seemingly an eon ago, I'd selected a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, an apple, and a bottle of iced tea for Mulder. I had a salad and fruit from home in our office refrigerator, but Mulder wouldn't get to steal the cucumbers and strawberries from my lunch that day. I felt an odd obligation to make sure Mulder ate healthfully, as if it made any difference at this point.

 

I remember how clean the world looked. How full of sounds and people and promise. I remember a flock of skittish butterflies made their home in my abdomen all morning, and Fox Mulder had seemed oblivious.

 

I had the food bagged and ready to hand off, but I returned to our office to find Mulder still half-heartedly working on a case-file as he watched a basketball game on the television set. As I walked in, he leaned back in his desk chair and, in time with the TV screen, made an imaginary three-point shot along with the New York Knicks. He threw up his hands in celebration. "Nothing but net, Scully."

 

A scar didn't mar his cheek. He was clean and clean-shaven, with soft hands and expensive hair products and sleepy hazel eyes backlit with infinite wonder.

 

"You're going to be nothing but late for your appointment," I'd informed him. I checked my watch. "You're supposed to be there in ten minutes, and our flight for Arcadia leaves at two-thirty."

 

Mulder pointed emphatically to the TV screen. "Tied, with two minutes on the clock. You bled through Super Bowl XXXIII. Let me have this."

 

I set the bag on his desk with a thump. "I was not bleeding during your Super Bowl. I was recovering from a GSW to the abdomen, and you watched your Super Bowl in my hospital room, Mulder," I reminded him. "You ate my Jell-O."

 

"Potato, potahto," he responded, still watching the screen.

 

Using my finely-honed G-woman powers of observation, I surveilled Mulder's VCR, walked over, and pushed the pause button. The Knicks froze mid-rebound on the basketball court. "It's last night's game, Mulder. According to the water cooler talk this morning, the Knicks lost by 14 points." 

 

Mulder made a sad puppy dog face at me.

 

"No time for pouting, Mulder. Dr. Parenti's expecting you. You haven't ejaculated in the past three days, right?"

 

"What?" Mulder deadpanned.

 

I winced. The words had left my mouth powered by nervous energy, not propriety. "I-"

 

Mulder leaned back in his chair. "It's sweater season. You were gone for ten whole minutes, Scully. If you didn't want me ejaculating, the crucial time to mention it was six minutes ago."

 

I put my hands on the back of the wooden office chair I often sat in. "I have a gun, Mulder. I have a gun, and a thirty-thousand-dollar loan against my 401K, and a heart rate comparable to a small rodent's right now. Get up, eat lunch as you drive to Dr. Parenti's office, and I'll meet you at the airport at two."

 

He got up and walked around his desk. "When I gave them my medical history, the nurse kept stopping me to ask, 'Is Dr. Scully aware of this? Is Dr. Scully aware of this?' Their lack of faith in my genetics is troubling."

 

"I have faith in you. That's all that matters."

 

He nodded, but continued standing a few feet from me.

 

I remember telling him, "Nothing has to change between us, Mulder," though in retrospect, I think I convinced one of us. Hint: it wasn't the Oxford-educated profiler whose genetics helped create the embryos which would be implanted in my body month after month.

 

Firm footsteps approached outside the office. AD Skinner stuck his head in our door, furrowed his brow, and asked tersely, "Why are you two not on a plane to California?"

 

"We're leaving right now," I lied.

 

"I want this investigation by the book," Skinner told Mulder, and pushed up the rolled sleeves on his white dress shirt. "Your first case back: keep your nose clean, figure out what happened to David and Nancy Kline, and have a report on my desk within the week. Do not put a flight to Antarctica on a Bureau credit card, do not claim to see a giant insect, and don't end up in a jail cell."

 

"Yes sir," Mulder responded.

 

Skinner looked momentarily and appropriately dubious but left. Mulder didn't speak again until the elevator binged and the elevator doors opened and closed.

 

"You know, when you're walking around-" Mulder gestured as if he had a beach ball on his belly. "AD Skinner's gonna suspect something's up in this basement office."

 

"We've been over this, Mulder. Your contribution is anonymous unless you say otherwise."

 

"It doesn't feel anonymous right now," he said, likely his first truthful statement since I returned from the cafeteria. "If you end up-" He made the pregnant belly gesture again. "-Mr. Big, Bald, and Beautiful will have me off the X-files and back on wiretaps and background checks. He's got a soft spot for you."

 

"He's a married man," I pointed out.

 

"He's a widower. Holly told me Sharon Skinner died."

 

I remember the sudden ache in my abdomen, where the baby I'd wanted would never grow. I raised my hand to my mouth. "Oh my God. I thought- I thought-" In retrospect I don't know what I'd thought that winter: about Sharon Skinner's death or about my blind faith in Dr. Parenti or about responding to Mulder's admission of love by asking him to help me create a baby. The existence of which - or lack thereof - did not guarantee nor preclude a romantic future. "When? Why didn't AD Skinner say something?"

 

"Probably because he didn't want you looking at him like that. The same reason, a month or two from now, I'm not looking forward to asking whether or not you're pregnant."

 

Another truthful statement, I suspect.

 

As I tried to compose some perfect response, Mulder's pocket trilled. He pulled out his cellphone and looked at the display. He turned the ringing phone around to show me 'Diana' called. Agent Fowley also kept calling our office voicemail, inviting Mulder to lunch. She left messages for "Fox," sometimes calling him "honey." I'd passed along the messages but didn't know if Mulder returned them or not. Mulder remained free to have lunch with the voluptuous, mysterious Agent Fowley. In fact, Mulder remained free to bang Diana Fowley on his lunch hour while I waddled around our office eight months pregnant with his child.

 

I hadn't considered our arrangement from that unflattering angle. Again, in hindsight, I think one of us had.

 

I gritted my teeth but tried to curb my bitchy as I asked, "What does Agent Fowley want?"

 

"Nothing of interest to me." He dropped the phone back in his pocket and reached for his coat. "I'm gonna make a pit stop at Dr. Parenti's, and I will see you at the airport."

 

"Lunch," I reminded him.

 

Mulder grabbed the bag and glanced inside. "Iced tea," he observed. "It is love." He gave me a fleeting grin. "We're gonna spend the week married. We could do this the old-fashioned way, on FBI time, and you could put that thirty-thousand-dollar loan back in your 401K."

 

"Actually, I can't do this the old-fashioned way. Remember?"

 

He'd nodded. He exhaled, deflated. "I know. I'm sorry." He stepped close to me. "Kiss for luck?"

 

I smiled and kissed his forehead.

 

"You missed," he complained, staying so close I felt the heat from his skin and smelled the starch in his shirt. "Try again. Lower. I promise the world won't end."

 

"Maybe later. Go," I ordered. "You're horribly late."

 

"I'm gonna run lights and sirens. Claim it's a masturbatory emergency."

 

"Your first since junior high?"

 

"Since Thursday." He'd grinned at me one last time before he left in a billow of dark trench coat and the sound of polished dress shoes against tile. "I'll see you at the airport. Wait for me," he called over his shoulder.

 

The butterflies inside my belly had taken flight.

 

                    ***

 

At some point, Mulder brings a sleeping bag from the Jeep and unzips it to cover both of us. I fall asleep with Mulder's arms around me but wake before dawn to find him sitting on one of the bunks, fully dressed. I'm naked. I ache between my legs. My face feels raw, my hair is a tangle, and I smell like I've been turning tricks in an alleyway. Mulder cleans Skinner's M16. A dented metal coffeepot perks over a fire in the hearth.

 

I wrap the green Army blanket around me and get up. Mulder pauses to sip from a metal cup of coffee. He doesn't speak, and he doesn't look at me.

 

I ask about the broken wristwatch, and the pregnant, eclamptic woman a few years ago. I ask about CGB Spender. I ask about my necklace.

 

Mulder doesn't look at me.

 

The skin on my shoulders prickles with cold. I ask where he's been the past five years. What happened to him after he left the bunker? Did he collude with the colonists? Were the stories true?

 

Mulder glances in my direction but focuses on his coffee as if I've intruded on his morning.

 

"I know you can speak. Look at me," I order. "Yes, I'm real. I want some answers."

 

I don't get answers, but he does look at me - without warmth, without familiarity. I don't feel him listening telepathically. Being alone with my thoughts seems lonely.

 

He closes his eyes, waits a second, and opens them again.

 

"Still keeping it real," I promise. "Still operating in accordance with the known laws of gravity and quantum physics."

 

"I'm sorry," he says flatly. His expression is February: cold and empty and cruel.

 

"Should I assume you're sorry we've established our mutual existence, or do you feel the need to apologize for quantum physics?"

 

Mulder's head tilts to one side, and the other, appraising me. After a thorough reconnoitering, he glances at the mattress on the floor, sighs, and takes another sip of coffee. "Alpha Colony is close; I'll take you there. The Director is a good man. They have a doctor. A female doctor."

 

I pull the old Army blanket tighter around me, but it does nothing against the damp cold. I step closer to the bunk where Mulder sits. "I am the female doctor in Alpha Colony, and you killed the Director last night."

 

In the firelight, Mulder shakes his head like I'm talking nonsense.

 

"Mulder-"

 

"Marty," he corrects.

 

"Are you kidding me? You are Fox William Mulder, and I'm Dana Katherine Scully. You and I had an office in the Hoover Building so deep in the basement you claimed you could see Hell from your desk. The world ended before you got me a desk, by the way. You lived in apartment 42 at 2630 Hegal Place. Samantha's birthday is January 22nd, and yours was two weeks ago. You're forty-three. You lost your virginity at seventeen after a basketball game and your high school girlfriend-"

 

He shakes his head again in the same slight, efficient movement. He must think I'm a hallucination reciting information he knows. Or an illusion. A real woman, but a stranger he sees as me.

 

"Mulder, I know your sperm count, your resting heart rate, and your old zip code. You can recite the box scores from the '56 World Series, but a million worthless dollars says you can't remember the date of your last tetanus shot." I cross my arms - partly for emphasis, partly because I'm freezing. "When Kennedy was assassinated, where was Abraham Zapruder's Dallas office?"

 

"The Dal-Tex Building," Mulder says. "On Elm Street, across from the Texas Book Depository."

 

"What's your blood type? AB negative or positive?"

 

He'd perked up at the mention of the Zapruder film, but his vaguely-annoyed, largely-blank expression returns.

 

"AB negative. I rest my case." I reach for his cup. He hands it over. "I'm real, Mulder. Don't make me quote Einstein or Descartes before I've had coffee. I-"

 

I reach to touch his stubbly cheek.

 

In a millisecond, I'm face down on the wide floorboards. Mulder has my arm twisted behind my back and his knee between my shoulder blades, exactly as they taught us at Quantico. The stainless-steel cup lands across the cabin, leaving a brown splash on the dirty wooden floor.

 

"What are you doing?" I try to move, but my shoulder threatens to dislocate. "Get off me." My cheek is against the floor and my eyes are even with the old mattress. "Are you insane?"

 

"Don't," he says hoarsely. I hear an odd little metallic 'ping' near my ear. "You aren't Dana Scully. Don't look like her, don't talk like her, and don't you dare touch me."

 

"I'm not a shape-shifter. Look at my palm. Is it bleeding?" The scrape from Skinner pushing me down last night feels wet. "Is my blood red? Those are hemoglobin proteins designed to bind with iron in an oxygen atmosphere. I'm human. I'm not a shape-shifter or a clone."

 

My wrist lowers slightly. The pain in my shoulder becomes merely torturous.

 

"Where did I get you?" he wants to know.

 

"You took me from outside Alpha Colony last night."

 

He demands, "Where are your clothes?"

 

"You took them off."

 

"Did I hurt you?"

 

"You're hurting me now."

 

After a pause, he releases my wrist. "I'm sorry."

 

He moves back. I roll over, scoot away, pull the blanket over me, and glare at him. Now my dirt is ground in, along with generations of microscopic adolescent Indian Guide debris. My shoulder aches, and my pride and palm smart. Mulder holds a sleek steel icepick. His thumb moves and the spike retracts.

 

I sniff once because my nose runs and twice as I fight the urge to cry. Instead of tears, I take refuge in sarcasm. "Mulder, even after an apocalypse, you still know how to show a lady a good time."

 

Mulder looks at me again but has no facial expression. He picks up the rifle and the sleeping bag, and he leaves. I stay seated on the floor. The coffee cup remains across the bunkhouse.

 

In the absence of any better option, I get up. Get dressed. Roll my sore shoulder and examine the scrape on my palm. I get the coffee cup and fill it.

 

Minutes later, I hear Mulder talking to himself outside like an irritable homeless person. Something about a backpack and being hungry and dealing with him. I go to a dirty window. Mulder's alone, pacing beside the Jeep in the darkness. Mulder spots me watching. He says abruptly, "Tell him," and disappears down a path into the inky forest.

 

His footsteps fade. I hear distant water flowing, and frogs singing, and the dying leaves rustling. The little fire in the bunkhouse burns, but the flames shiver as if they're also cold and afraid.

 

I sniff again.

 

Mulder's the believer. He believes Grimm's fairytales germinated in truth and a Hasbro Ouija board can contact the dead. He'll buy about anything until confronted with scientific proof otherwise - and sometimes in the face of scientific proof otherwise. In Mulder's world, fairies might live under toadstools, and any deep lake or dark forest or wide puddle might harbor a cryptid.

 

This man isn't Mulder. He looks like Mulder, and occasionally sounds like Mulder, but this man won't even believe in me. I'm a scientist. I gather evidence, and every clue indicates Skinner was right. My partner's a brilliant, telepathic sociopath with a vague memory of loving me.

 

Mulder's left the back of the Jeep open. The dome light glows and, from the bunkhouse's doorway, I see keys in the lock. If I can retrace our route last night and find the highway, I can find Alpha Colony.

 

He isn't listening.

 

I glance at my weapon, still holstered, on a bunk beside my pack.

 

Leaves rustle at the edge of the clearing. I step outside. "Mulder?"

 

Cold mist descends on my face and dampens the fabric of my jacket. The light from the bunkhouse window reaches as far as the Jeep, and the Jeep's dome light reaches a few more feet. Beyond that are old trees, and beyond that, blackness. No eyes glow, but the hair on the back of my neck prickles, all the same.

 

Something moves in the forest again.

 

I venture farther. The metal cup between my palms grows tepid. "Mulder? Is that you?" A flashlight, Dana, I remind myself. Next apocalypse, pack a flashlight along with the bra and long underwear and gun.

 

As I near the Jeep, something large moves, creating a breeze like a subway train rushing past. I turn. It passes behind me, brushing my jacket sleeve and making a raspy hissing sound.

 

I don't bother asking if it's Mulder.

 

The next hiss comes from my left - louder, lower. Followed by a hacking cough.

 

I whirl again and scream. A potbellied, pale, bald man with elf-like ears stands between me and the bunkhouse. He's barefooted and wearing dirty gray sweatpants.

 

"Get away from me," I order.

 

In response, the man - the creature - tilts his head, opens his mouth, and hisses again, spraying me with spittle. Its pointed teeth suggest some form of amelogenesis imperfect, though I can't think of a genetic disorder also accounting for the pointed ears, pale skin, and alopecia. Not that accurate diagnosis is my top priority.

 

It waddles toward me.

 

Mulder isn't listening.

 

"Get back," I repeat, and douse it with lukewarm coffee.

 

The creature swats at me. I bash the metal cup against its knuckles. It yelps, waddles back, and hisses before it licks its wound. Its hands have long, webbed fingers ending in dirty yellow fingernails.

 

My victory is brief. It hoists up its sweatpants and steps toward me again. If I race to the bunkhouse - and win - I'll have my gun, but I'm trapped inside. I slide my hand beneath the Jeep's passenger door handle. Locked. I wipe the creature's spit from my face and ready my cup for battle.

 

I hear quick human footsteps. "Mulder, help," I yell.

 

A rock whizzes past me to strike the creature's temple. It cowers and hisses as blood trickles down its jaw. A second rock hits a pale, meaty shoulder. The creature turns to hiss, and I slam my metal cup into its pointed ear.

 

"Get away from her," Mulder yells. Another rock, thrown like a fastball, hits the creature's chest.

 

I reach blindly into the back of the Jeep and strike pay dirt beside a plastic storage container. A tire iron.

 

"Get away," Mulder yells at it again, which garners another hiss.

 

The creature eyes the tire iron, sizes up Mulder, and, with a gust of cold wind, rushes past me and into the forest.

 

I lower the cup and tire iron and lean against the Jeep's rear bumper. My heart pounds and I shake from the inside out. "What the hell was that, Mulder?"

 

I get Mulder's usual post-colonization verbal response: none. Instead, he studies me as night begins giving way to a miserable gray dawn. Without looking away, he lowers a wet canteen to the ground and straightens up. The odd pressure returns behind my forehead.

 

"Batboy?" Mulder's armed but he elected to throw rocks, meaning he categorized the creature as a pest, not a threat. "Did we just fight off the _Weekly World News_ ' Batboy trying to pilfer through your Jeep?"

 

Mulder nods jerkily.

 

A final angry hiss emerges from the forest, followed by a horrible smoker's cough.

 

"Time has not been kind to Batboy," I observe. 

 

Mulder steps closer. He seems to gather his thoughts. "You should see the Jersey Devil."

 

"Really?"

 

Mulder puffs out his cheeks.

 

A nervous laugh bubbles in my chest but doesn't reach my lips. I stare at him with my coffee cup and tire iron still at the ready.

 

"Scully?" he says uncertainly.

 

I nod.

 

His eyes search mine like a sailor seeking a lighthouse in a storm. Mulder reaches a trembling hand toward my face. I grip the tire iron tighter and try not to flinch. Gently, Mulder wipes something slimy from my cheek. It's a gallant gesture, but he looks down at the wad of yellow mucus on his finger, seeming both repulsed and surprised. Mulder flicks his fingers distastefully and, in the end, wipes his hand against the leg of his jeans.

 

I can't help it; he terrifies me, but I giggle. Despite Oxford and Quantico and years in a dank basement office with a Betty of a partner, Fox Mulder will still stick his fingers in everything from human bile to green alien goo but act shocked and disgusted he gets it on him.

 

Mulder - the man who killed our old boss last night, and the man who was holding me face-down on the floor with an alien weapon to my neck ten minutes ago - gives me a hint of an awkward, self-deprecating grin.

 

Maybe Skinner was right; maybe love does have to hurt for me to like it.

 

I drop the metal cup and offer my scraped hand, though my arm feels too heavy to lift more than inches. Mulder takes it. Our hands touch, and I feel a hum as circuit is completed. The tire iron thuds to the dirt. I put my arms around Mulder. He's too slim, too hard. I'm sniffing again. After far too long, I feel his hand petting my hair.

 

"Don't you wipe bat snot on my hair," I order.

 

His hand stops moving. "Are you real?" he asks hoarsely. "I hear you, Scully. I see you. I feel you. Are you real?"

 

"I'm real," I promise. "This is real."

 

Mulder nods again. He stays still as I stroke his back and run my fingers over his shorn hair. He's real, and I'm not giving up on him.

 

By sunrise, we're on the highway again, traveling west. Mulder plays an Elvis CD at top volume and doesn't listen to me. I don't know where we're going, or why, or what happened to Mulder after he left the Greenbrier's bunker - or why he didn't come back. What he needed from Skinner or me. I don't think Mulder planned to take me with him. Mulder has one sleeping bag, one coffee cup. I have the jacket and clothing I wear, my weapon, and my backpack: tissue paper, two FBI badges, a broken watch, and one more clean change of socks and underwear. I have no extra bullets. No knife. No matches or food or flashlight. No means of survival in the world except the man beside me.

 

The green Jeep flies across the highway, down an embankment, and onto a secondary road. Still west. The farms and little towns we pass are deserted, and the fields and fences empty. I expect more monsters and mutants, but like Byers' map says, there is mile after mile of nothing.

 

In an abandoned little town littered with National Guard trucks and sandbags, Mulder stops at an empty intersection, looking up and down an equally empty two-lane highway. After a moment's consideration, he turns left. I see a barricade ahead, and military tanks. Cement supports remain where a bridge once spanned a river. Mulder stops the Jeep and squints into the morning sun.

 

He turns the vehicle around, retraces his path to the intersection, and chooses the westbound, and I presume correct, option.

 

"Being psychic hasn't improved your sense of direction?"

 

Mulder doesn't answer, but he takes my hand. I still feel terrified but, for the first time in years, I also feel free.

 

He shifts gears and the Jeep gains speed. We leave the town behind, and the hills open into broad valleys. Even so, amen, I tell myself, half as reassurance, and half in prayer.

 

                    ***

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Alpha Colony had too few women. Earth had too few women. Conservationists estimated pandas could be saved with a minimum viable population of sixty, but humans needed at least two hundred breeding adults to avoid extinction. Four hundred was a better bet. Excluding me, Alpha Colony had five women between seventeen and forty-five, and a few more in Purgatory. Richmond had four women, and Norfolk Inland, three. Providence Colony: five. Mount Weather and Ashland: seven each. Males still trickled into Alpha Colony - roamers tired of roaming or men migrating from other colonies, like Prichard - but four years after colonization, another 175 women seemed unlikely to appear.

 

But if, by some miracle, humans lived on, rebuilt, repopulated? In a few thousand years, once life outside our colony resembled something besides a Mad Max movie, and mankind flourished rather than fought to survive, those spaceships would block out the sun again and the cycle would repeat.

 

I knew mankind's future. There'd been no word from China on the pandas.

 

Even after so many years, even though Walter Skinner wore a t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, he stood when I entered a room. He'd showered and shaved since this afternoon. He held a paperback novel. A glass of amber-colored liquid sat on his nightstand, but I saw no bottle.

 

Skinner, Moovera, Houston, and Houston's traders returned from Ashland this afternoon with tanker trucks of fuel, various supplies and, between them, a dozen abrasions, four lacerations, two minor bullet wounds, a concussion, and a broken nose. And a malnourished, filthy, nearly-catatonic young woman. All of Alpha Colony's men returned home alive; I doubted the same could be said for the rovers who'd ambushed them.

 

Skinner gestured for me to take his chair. His bedroom furniture, like mine, came from the resort above us. He had the same high bed, an overstuffed leather chair and ottoman, a nightstand, a lamp, and dresser. Office partitions created four large rooms inside the gray cement walls. I'd stitched up Captain Houston's lacerated hand hours ago and sent him off with pain pills, so he should be sound asleep in the far corner. Brewster was out with the foragers. Moovera, uninjured, still organized the new supplies upstairs.

 

I sat down and propped my latest pair of Nikes on the ottoman. "You didn't report for sick call."

 

"I'm okay," Skinner assured me. The abrasions on his knuckles and cheekbone made me question the legitimacy of his assurance. Thin wire held his glasses together at one temple. He sat down on the side of his bed, still holding the paperback. His bare feet dangled. "How is she?"

 

I couldn't get the young woman they'd rescued to write or speak, so 'she' didn't even have a name. "I'll be able to tell you more in the morning," I said. "For tonight, I sedated her. Sedation poses a slight risk to her fetus but having her rip out the IV and cower in the corner poses a bigger risk."

 

Skinner's brow creased. "She's pregnant?"

 

I nodded. "About sixteen weeks."

 

"Jesus, Scully. She can't be more than a teenager. What I saw of her: she looks like she went ten rounds with Roberto Duran."

 

"Pregnant women survived Auschwitz," I said. "Nature finds a way. Bosnian women bore children in 'rape camps' in Yugoslavia. In Peru and Nicaragua, ninety percent of pregnancies in girls under sixteen occur by rape. When the Japanese army occupied Nanking in 1937, as many as 80,000-"

 

"Enough." Skinner winced as he raised his right hand in a 'stop' gesture. "I get the point."

 

In Alpha Colony, competition for female attention was high and sometimes violent, but the men did not rape, abuse, or coerce. Prostitutes got paid and pornography remained out of sight. Our children had a school with a playground and a teacher and Myrtle the Pet Turtle. I made a house call last month because Myrtle had a cold. Lawrence North had a bus running so the kids could ride a little yellow bus to school. The last time I was near the west gate, I saw a playhouse and a wooden swing set someone built for Julie's dirty, unsupervised toddler and preschooler. A playhouse and a swing set outside Alpha Colony's fences. Outside Alpha Colony, rovers raped teenage girls. A roamer brought a woman to our gates a few months ago, offering to sell her. Inside Alpha Colony, men held open doors and called me 'ma'am' and stood when I entered a room.

 

"I saw Houston before he went to sleep. Are the rest of my men okay?" Skinner asked next.

 

"Would I be here if they weren't?"

 

He shook his head. Skinner moved so he sat back against the headboard, and tossed the paperback aside. The novel had _Delta Force_ on the front but, given the artwork, should have been titled _Testosterone-fueled Adolescent Military Pulp Fantasy_. A cardboard box on the floor held stacks of similar books.

 

His eyes followed my gaze. "I found the whole series."

 

"Thank God. We've lost the Library of Alexandria, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress, but you've recovered _Delta Force: Never Leave a Man Behind_ and its ninety sequels. Aren't you embarrassed?"

 

The corner of his mouth turned up in a grin designed for a hundred watts but getting about fifteen. "This is Alpha Colony, population middle-aged male, Scully. There's a mile-long waiting list for these, but I called dibs."

 

"You were holding the first installment of this literary saga with your left hand," I observed, "and you're avoiding moving your right arm. Why?"

 

Skinner pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show me a graze wound on his right shoulder. "Dodged a bullet."

 

"Do you want me to clean and bandage that?"

 

He shook his head 'no,' but scooted over, making a place for me beside him. "Can you stay, or do you need to get back to the medical clinic?"

 

In answer, I moved from the chair to his bed, sitting beside him: back against the pillows and headboard, my Nikes left on the cement floor. My female patient wouldn't wake up. I'd sent most of the injured men to their bunks or homes to rest, and Prichard, my new nurse, could manage the remaining few.

 

"I heard tales all evening that belong in your _Delta Force_ books," I told Skinner. "Apparently, as the rovers attacked, each of your men personally - heroically and under fire - spotted and rescued that young woman."

 

"The firefight was over. Houston spotted her in one of the escaping rovers' trucks and nailed the driver in the back of the head." Skinner shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "Moo got her out, wrapped a blanket around her, and we headed for home." He added lightly, into my ear, "I found the blanket while losing drops of blood."

 

He took my hand, intertwining our fingers.

 

As we sat side by side, I asked, "All the rovers either escaped or died in the firefight?" Houston regaled me with a similar account earlier, and his story included witnessing a bullet wing Skinner. I’d asked Houston the same question, and he smoothly, charmingly, avoided answering. As had every other injured man. "Or were there survivors?"

 

Skinner studied the tall gray partition across his bedroom. Enough seconds passed that I thought he wouldn't answer either. He said, "Three rovers were wounded, and two others got left behind. It suffices to say, Moo likes knives and dislikes rapists." He glanced at his red, raw knuckles. "I share his distaste."

 

"Ah." I crossed my legs at the ankle.

 

"We could have shot them outright."

 

I took a turn at shrugging.

 

From a dark corner of the dorm, Houston's voice mumbled, "Stay at your dad's, Jackie. It's safe..." and something unintelligible. Houston's bed shifted, and I heard, "Daddy loves you, too."

 

Skinner let go of my hand. He reached for the tumbler of whisky and took a drink too large to be considered a sip. He passed me the glass. "The rovers had a second female. Teens, slim, lots of curly brown hair. A younger sister, maybe. The rover driving the vehicle she was in got away." He leaned back against the headboard. "Moo wants to try to track the rovers. So does Houston, and his men have volunteered to go with him. Those vehicles scattered in three different directions, snow's covered the tracks by now, and if those rovers are holed up on some military base, it's a suicide mission."

 

"You'll let them try, though."

 

"If they volunteer, I can't live with not letting them try." He worried his lips. "If they find the other girl, a rescue mission puts her in the middle of a firefight. Rovers desperate enough to attack our convoy might be desperate enough to sell her." He paused as if waiting for my opinion. I didn't respond. Skinner rubbed a bloodstain on the thigh of my scrub pants. "I keep thinking about what would happen to you if I'd dodged left instead of right this afternoon."

 

"I'd still be on my feet, cutting lead out of your chest instead of sitting back and enjoying this-" I held up the tumbler, studying the contents. "-contraband rotgut."

 

"You know what I mean." He gave the bloodstain a final, futile rub. "Women are inherently weaker. Smaller. Men run faster. Men don't get pregnant. The FBI successfully integrated female agents, and I applaud that, but every time the Marines talked about women in combat positions, it boiled down to childbearing and muscle mass."

 

I raised the tumbler as if making a toast. "Those occasions I, despite my inferior muscle mass and cyclically shedding uterine lining, saved your ass? You're welcome."

 

His expression suggested a headache coming on.

 

I tried the whiskey. Twice. "Fine," I conceded. "It's a war zone outside our gates. Those of us lacking a Y chromosome are an endangered species and the ERA is dead in the water. For the moment, we'll overlook I'm barren as the Sahara Desert. We'll also overlook that the times I've required rescue, you usually weren't the man doing the rescuing. Let's focus on the problem at hand. The young woman in my clinic and the young woman Houston and Moovera want to rescue: what are you planning to do with them?"

 

"Do?" he echoed.

 

"I have a pregnant, mute, nineteen or twenty-year-old girl asleep in my bedroom because the sight of any man terrifies her. I also have dozens of lonely, well-intentioned, heavily-armed former Green Berets and Navy SEALs and Secret Service agents milling around outside my clinic, asking if there's anything they can do to help. If she needs anything. She needs a few weeks in a trauma unit followed by years of therapy, but instead she has alpha males acting on instinct: competing to fulfill their biological destiny with the limited resources available. I can't keep her in my bedroom forever. Does someone call dibs? Should I have your men sign up on a waiting list to woo this woman, or are you planning to let them shoot it out in the dining hall?"

 

I tried the whiskey again. The taste improved. I never like whiskey until the third sip, and after that I liked it until my nose got numb.

 

"Dana, how have I pissed you off by trying to do the right thing?"

 

I exhaled and passed Skinner the tumbler. "I'm not angry at you," I said. "I'm angry at-" I considered. "At the colonists, at Mulder, at myself. I'm angry at this world and those rovers and that we're even having this conversation."

 

"So am I." As we sat on his bed, my old boss put his arm around my shoulders. "I don't like this job today. This is Alpha Colony. We're supposed to be the good guys."

 

I stroked the dark hair on the back of his hand and looked at the marks on his knuckles. His body was familiar. Occasionally, Mulder still listened - which Skinner despised - but often it was the two of us. Late at night. Two people seeking solace as the world slept.

 

"You are," I promised. "One of the good guys."

 

"So are you. You're also, unfortunately, right about the girl." Favoring his right shoulder, he emptied the tumbler in one swallow.

 

For a while, he stared down at the pulp military novel on the bedspread beside us. The chiseled men on the cover looked righteous and certain of their mission. They were the good guys and evil had a face. Evil was one frontal assault, not a hundred niggling details and decisions.

 

On Skinner's dresser, I spotted a homemade card with 'To Uncle Walter' on the front. An adult printed the words, but a child decorated the front with crayon and stickers. I doubted Dmitry did the coloring, but he might have sired the preschooler who did. A preschooler enjoying a new swing set and playhouse. Skinner wouldn't let Julie the Prostitute inside Alpha Colony, but the little school bus must stop at the west gate. I'd seen Julie's oldest son at the school, and I'd received a similar card after saving Myrtle the Turtle.

 

"Do you want to go for a drive, Scully?" Skinner asked abruptly. "Get out of here for a while?"

 

"A drive?" I echoed. "A drive where?"

 

"Away. Up the mountain. As far as we can get without you leaving Alpha Colony. I'm having a shitty day, and you're gonna get rickets spending so much time in this bunker. Pellagra. Scurvy. Something."

 

"Osteomalacia," I said.

 

"You'll need a coat; it was still snowing earlier. I'll meet you at the west door in ten minutes."

 

By the time I checked on my patients and bundled up, Skinner was dressed and had his SUV warming up outside. The back seat held a couple blankets and the center console held a nearly-full bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon.

 

"You're injured; I'll drive," I told him as he opened the passenger door for me.

 

"It's snowing."

 

My eyebrows rose to a threatening latitude. "Are you kidding me?"

 

"You have the helm, Captain Scully." Skinner acquiesced and got in the passenger seat. A Willie Nelson CD played on the stereo. Skinner turned the volume down, but he frowned as I adjusted his seat and mirrors.

 

As I drove, the snow fell in huge flakes, covering a land shored up by hard labor and wired together from rusting technology. A world slowly sliding toward extinction, with walls and razor wire and machine guns - and Walter Skinner - separating us from lawless iniquity.

 

In the end, all gods let their children stand on their own. Free to make our own path. God - Skinner's God and mine, Mulder's clockmaker god, Moovera's Hindu gods, the alien gods in their spaceships - had left us. We were what remained: survivors. Imperfect, but not monsters.

 

I reached the mountain top, and we were alone. I parked looking out over a frozen white kingdom.

 

"If I could drive straight up," I remember telling Skinner as I let the engine idle to run the heater, "at highway speed, we'd reach outer space within an hour. Space is close, with only Newtonian physics holding us back. That's all that keeps us here."

 

He took a drink from the bottle and passed it to me.

 

"You're my friend," I said. "I trust you. I respect you, and I'm grateful to you, but I don't love you, I won't get pregnant, and I don't care what's outside our gates. The only thing keeping me here is I don't know Mulder's location out there."

 

"Sugar-coat it, Scully," Skinner responded sarcastically.

 

I drank and considered a moment as I watched the snowflakes melt on the windshield. "Offer to buy her: the girl the rovers still have," I told him. "If we find her, have your men hand over whatever the rovers demand, get the girl, and kill the rovers. Don't bother with a firefight unless you have to. The same for any roamer offering to sell us a woman. As soon as she's inside the gate, he dies. Any outsider who sets foot in Alpha Colony with a woman or girl he's abusing: he dies; she stays."

 

He nodded.

 

More snowflakes met the warm windshield and dissolved. My nose grew numb. "I like Lawrence North. Lawrence fixed my centrifuge while you and Moovera were gone, and he's nice to his old dog. He's shown me pictures of his family from Before. I think he's sweet."

 

"For the pregnant girl?" Skinner's brow crinkled. "Lawrence North is at least twice her age, and a former CIA assassin. An actual Man In Black. You think he's sweet?" 

 

"I'm in love with Fox Mulder. Maybe my standard for 'sweet' is a little skewed." I passed the bottle to Skinner. "Lawrence is resourceful. Calm. He's a good leader and loyal to you. He makes people feel safe. This young woman you've rescued: she needs to feel safe."

 

"I'm not giving a young woman away like a good conduct medal." Skinner's forehead hadn't unwrinkled. "Lawrence North?"

 

I nodded. "Unless you want her?"

 

"Why would I want her?"

 

I gave him a sidelong glance but didn't bother answering.

 

"I'll talk to Lawrence," Skinner said.

 

That winter night, on the mountain above the Greenbrier bunker, the snow fell, and a huge moon glowed silvery-white behind the clouds. Willie Nelson sang about all the girls he'd loved, and the SUV's engine idled in the darkness, wasting the fuel the foragers and traders risked their lives to bring back. White hills stretched as far as I could see into the darkness. The view from atop Walter Skinner was stunning.

 

Our men never found the second girl, but Skinner let them spend months trying. Using fuel, using manpower. Because it was the right thing to do and Skinner was one of the good guys. One of the noble, loyal, heroic, truly good guys you wanted on your side when bullets rained or the sky fell.

 

I wasn't a good guy, but I was Fox Mulder's girl.

 

                   ***

 

Once he figures out where he's going, Mulder navigates expertly and at top speed through this decaying world. Fields of weeds have overtaken yards. Vines climb collapsed houses and cover swing sets. I see burned-out homes and broken store-fronts. Occasionally, a crashed airplane or fighter jet. Dead traffic lights sway at intersections, and power and telephone lines hang like old spider webs. Mulder drives through stop signs without looking for traffic, which troubles me. The highways resemble rush hour gridlock, except the vehicles have flat tires and no occupants behind the steering wheel. The air smells oddly clean, free of the carbon emissions we thought would destroy humanity.

 

In addition to the scar on his cheek, Mulder has scars on his wrists: top and bottom, as if someone drove a spike through. He doesn't tell me to cover my hair. He doesn't tell me where we're going. He doesn't touch me. He remains eerily silent as the mountains become gentle hills covered in Kentucky bluegrass. We travel west, mile after silent mile, through a void littered with humanity's remains. We could be the only two people alive on Earth. That is both freeing and horrifying as we travel toward I know not what.

 

"Stop that. He'll bite you," Mulder says. He hands me a bag from the backseat as he drives. He has apples, jerky, and a package of stale cookies. I look in the bag and around the interior of the Jeep for something that might bite me. I see nothing. Mulder doesn't explain.

 

Mulder sticks to side roads, though his route appears well-traveled. By late afternoon, he's played _Viva Las Vegas_ , _Aloha from Hawaii_ , _Jailhouse Rock, and Suspicious Minds_ from beginning to end twice. I suspect the Elvis CD's act as a white noise machine for him, because he listens to me intermittently. Cars have been pushed into the median so one lane on the road is clear. Other times, he drives along the berm. I notice vehicles with wheels missing or hoods up. Some cars have white X's spray painted on their sides, and others have the X on the hood. Some cars have both.

 

As the sun slides downward, bruising the sky, Mulder slows, watching the abandoned cars. I wait in the passenger seat while he parks beside an aged Buick and siphons gas directly from the Buick's tank to the Jeep's tank. Once the Buick's tank is dry, Mulder marks the car with an X spray-painted on the side and moves on. He passes up a newer, low-to-the-ground sports car for an SUV. This time, he crawls beneath the vehicle, makes a hole in the fuel tank, and fills his gas cans as the fuel leaks out. The SUV gets a white X on the side, as well.

 

I get out of the Jeep as Mulder carries the now-full gas cans back. "What's the meaning of an X on the hood?" I ask.

 

He speaks for the first time in hours. "Nothing valuable inside the car."

 

I walk along the edge of the state highway, looking in vehicle windows. Dead bees litter the dashboards. I see purses and briefcases. Laptops, phones. One station wagon has paper grocery bags of ice cream and bread in the back. Suitcases. Pet carriers. I stop at a car seat with the remains of an infant still strapped in it. The old minivan has a white X on the hood.

 

I'd never considered what happened to humans too small to gestate the virus. We'd found dead animals trapped in houses and pens, and a few human suicides, but I never thought about the tiniest infected humans who got abandoned.

 

"Skinner's men bury them," Mulder's voice says. He points in his oddly efficient way, and I notice a series of little mounds on the hillside. We've passed those graves all day; I don't know what I thought they were.

 

The minivan's passenger doors are flush against a guardrail. The driver's door and the back lock have been jimmied, but the infant seat strapped in the backseat is difficult to reach.

 

"Do you want me to bury him?" he asks.

 

I look at Mulder numbly. The sense of freedom, so like an exploding star earlier, condenses to a painful remnant inside me.

 

Hell isn't fire and brimstone. Hell's here, alone in the foreboding silence, with infinite shards of inhumanity waiting to stab at you. Hell is a murder-suicide in the front parlor, and an empty church with a hundred open hymnals, and an abandoned infant's corpse too inaccessible to bury.

 

I get back in the Jeep. Close the door, roll up the window, try to block everything out. I still hear people everywhere. In the abandoned cars, in the windows of the empty houses. Billions of men and women accusing me of failing them by not dying with them. Saying I knew. I could have prevented this. Saying, if not for me, Mulder might have saved them.

 

This has been Mulder's life. One ghost town after another, alone, hunted and haunted by the absent dead. Relics remain - purses, key rings, eyeglasses, a single shoe - but no bodies. Five years ago, as mankind began launching nuclear warheads and annihilating cities, the colonists stopped waiting for their young to hatch and started taking the infected adult hosts.

 

The newly-filled gas cans still sit beside Mulder's Jeep. For the first time, I notice a child's booster seat in the back. Beneath Mulder's stack of Elvis CD's is a purple _Barney_ CD.

 

I watch as Mulder opens the back of the minivan, crawls inside, and pulls the car seat out. He gets a little shovel from the Jeep, and soon a fresh grave joins the others on the hillside.

 

"Was there a child in here?" I ask as Mulder returns, smelling of gasoline and with dirt on his hands.

 

He must not understand. I feel him inside my head, listening, before he answers, "No. The Jeep was empty. Tank full, keys under the mat."

 

He loads the cans of gas and climbs behind the wheel again. The air cools. Unless he wants to risk driving after dark, we'll have to stop soon. Find a place to spend the night.

 

Mulder looks toward the slowly dying sun. He glances at me, and back at the fallow fields.

 

"What do you hear?" I whisper like I might disturb someone.

 

After a minute, Mulder points to a white farmhouse in the distance. Faint smoke rises from the chimney. "Their woman's sick. Lynn."

 

"Lynn?" I echo. "I know those people."

 

He knows I know those people, of course.

 

I don't need to make my request aloud, and Mulder doesn't nod. He starts the engine and turns onto a side road. Minutes later, he's driving down a rutted gravel driveway, toward the farmhouse.

 

I spot a white Chevy Suburban parked on the far side of the farmhouse, hidden from the road. Cajun Jeff stands on the porch, waiting to greet us with a shotgun.

 

Mulder doesn't watch Jeff. He's focused on a bush beside the house with the expression of an English Pointer that's sighted a rabbit. Before the Jeep has stopped completely, I open the door. "Jeff," I call. "It's Dr. Scully."

 

Handsome Cajun Jeff lowers his shotgun dubiously. "Dr. Scully? For true?"

 

Blond Leo steps out from behind the bush, holding an assault rifle pointed at the ground. "Name your price. Whatever you want, it's yours, ma'am," Leo offers. His demeanor suggests urgency in combination with a case of lock-jaw. "There's something wrong with Lynn."

 

There is something wrong with Lynn. She lies on an old teal sofa with an ugly afghan over her legs. Her eyes don't open as Leo and Jeff and I enter the house. She's flushed, though the fire in the hearth is small and across the room. Chico Joe is kneeling on the rug beside her. A can of 7-Up with a straw sits beside him.

 

I doubt much flusters a Marine combat medic, but Joe startles. He crosses himself and tells Leo emphatically, "Don't you ever say the Blessed Virgin doesn't answer prayer, you Protestant heathen." To me, Joe says, "She has a fever, doc. I gave her antibiotics an hour ago, but now I can't even get her to drink."

 

I kneel beside Lynn. She wears the same clothing as yesterday morning, as do the three men. Jeff stands over beside Joe. Leo remains at one end of the sofa as if on guard. I see duffle bags and backpacks, and several sleeping bags still in the stuff sacks. Lynn uses someone's jacket as a pillow. Joe tries to wake her, but she remains asleep.

 

Her forehead feels on fire. I pull the afghan off her and put Joe to work removing her shirt and jeans. She wears a lacy white bra and panties, similar to what I have on.

 

"Did one of you have sexual intercourse with her in the past two days?"

 

"No, doc."

 

"No, ma'am."

 

"No," Cajun Jeff echoes Joe and Leo, also sounding insulted. "You tell us two weeks, you," Jeff says. "Your Director want us out, so last night, we find a place in the woods. We eat some nice Dinty Moore beef stew. Leo and me keep watch; Joe sleep in the truck with Lynn. Keep an eye on her, like you say. This morning, she still hurtin' and a little under the weather, but she wanna go home." Jeff adjusts his hands on the shotgun. "The morphine make her sleep. You say let her rest, but we get here and she burnin' up."

 

I check her pulse. Her fingernails have gone from pink to a bright coral color, and her toenails match.

 

Jeff seems to note the nails. He looks at Joe. "What you have Lynn gigglin' about in the truck last night?" His forefinger moves from the shotgun's stock to the trigger guard. "Yeah, I hear you. Do 'don't be touchin' the lady' mean somethin' different where you come from, Chico?"

 

"I answered the doc, pretty boy." Without looking away from Lynn, Joe says coolly, "Keep listening. Take notes."

 

"Shut up," I tell them. Lynn's not dying out here in Hell. She can die of breast cancer three years from now, in her own bed, with a baby or two asleep in the crib, but she's not dying in someone else's house, on someone else's ugly sofa. "Do you have a thermometer? Show me your antibiotics."

 

Chico Joe opens a big Army duffle. "Doc, we got anything-" He looks up and exclaims, "Mierda! Leo!"

 

Leo's rifle leaps upward, pointed at Mulder, who stands in the doorway.

 

Mulder holds my backpack, but his weapon remains in his holster.

 

"Where did he come from?" Joe demands. A revolver's appeared in his hand, also aimed at the doorway. Joe stays between Mulder and the sofa. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Was he with the doc? Leo, I'm taking care of Lynn. You're on watch."

 

"He- He-" Leo, for the first time, seems human rather than an Aryan Marine-bot. "He must have been in the Jeep. Fuck. Yeah. He's with the doctor. He must have been driving. I have him. Get Lynn. Let's go."

 

The scars limit Joe's facial expression, but he clearly thinks Leo belongs in the National Hall of Military Stupid. One handed, and without lowering his weapon or his eyes leaving Mulder, Joe hurriedly shoves supplies into a duffle bag.

 

Leo levels his rifle at Mulder but keeps shifting his stance. Mulder has no expression. His eyelids blink, but no emotion shows in his eyes.

 

The Borg, I think. The hive mind. He's listening to everyone's thoughts but seems to feel nothing.

 

"No trouble," Jeff assures Mulder in that Cajun drawl. He keeps his hands visible. "We ain't lookin' for no trouble. Just have a sick lady needin' a place to rest her head. We on our way." He jostles Lynn's shoulder. "Wake up, baby. We gotta move."

 

Lynn doesn't wake.

 

Mulder doesn't move. Not a muscle.

 

Joe has the duffle bag zipped. Leo keeps the rifle aimed at Mulder. "Pick her up," Leo orders. "Let's go."

 

Jeff puts his arms under Lynn's bare shoulders and legs.

 

"No." I intervene, stopping Jeff. "She's not going anywhere."

 

Jeff eases Lynn down. Joe lowers the duffle, not the revolver. The three men glance at Mulder nervously.

 

"Sit," I order Mulder, and nod to a chair in the corner of the farmhouse's dim, fussy living room. "Sit down, and do not kill anyone."

 

Mulder sits down. I pull the afghan over Lynn.

 

"Show me the antibiotic you're giving her."

 

Joe holsters his weapon and fishes out a bottle.

 

"She doesn't have an ingrown toenail," I tell him. "Show me what else you have." Joe turns the duffle bag up and, bless his soul, an entire pharmacy and ER fall out. I see I.V. bags. Saline. Alcohol. I send Jeff to wet some towels to cool her down. Joe, I put to work mixing up an IV antibiotic solution. Blond Leo doesn't get a job; I don't think I could talk him into putting down the rifle.

 

Without a word, Mulder gets up from his assigned chair and goes outside. Leo watches him leave. Mulder closes the front door after him.

 

"He take you or buy you?" Jeff asks softly. "Fox Mulder? He hafta take you. I see you with the boss yesterday. And you a doctor, you. No way the Director let Fox Mulder have you."

 

"It's okay, ma'am. I can take him out," Leo assures me, watching the closed door. He glances at Joe. "We can. Joe and I can take anyone out. You help Lynn and leave him to us. We'll get you back to Alpha Colony safe and sound."

 

Joe doesn't argue, but he has his 'Hall of Stupid' expression again.

 

I pull back my jacket to show them my holster. "You're not taking anyone out. Fox Mulder was my partner in the FBI. He's not a monster, and I'm not his property."

 

"You mistaken, cher," Jeff informs me coolly.

 

I don't answer. Lynn flinches as I start the IV line, which is a good sign.

 

I hear a 'pop' outside the door. Mulder returns shaking instant cold packs. I fold back the afghan and put one pack in each of Lynn's armpits. Mulder leans down to lay one on her neck.

 

"Don't touch her," Leo barks, and raises the rifle. "Back away. Do not touch her! Do not put your Goddamn hands on her."

 

Mulder looks up. Leo flinches, Mulder's hand moves, and in a heartbeat Mulder's holding Leo's assault rifle pointed at Leo. I don't think Mulder moved the rifle via telekinesis; I think he stunned Leo telepathically long enough to grab it. Still, the outcome is the same.

 

Joe eases his hand away from his holstered pistol. I see a trepidatious glance between Joe and Jeff. As Joe isn't easily flustered, Leo doesn't lose many fights, I suspect.

 

Blond Leo's nose bleeds and his mouth hangs open. Mulder has a facial expression: vaguely annoyed.

 

"He won't touch her," I promise. "I need to lower her body temperature. Mulder's helping. He won't touch your woman, and he won't kill anyone who doesn't try to kill him first." I sound like a parent settling a squabble. "Right, Mulder? Nod, Mulder."

 

Mulder nods and gives me the third cold pack. Taking the rifle with him, he returns to his designated corner chair and sits. He resumes the unsettling stillness. He keeps the assault rifle out of spite, I suspect.

 

"How did he know what you wanted, doc?" Joe asks but doesn't get an answer. Head tilted, he studies Mulder. "How did you know?"

 

Joe must have wondered if Mulder can read his thoughts, because Mulder looks at Joe and says evenly, "Yes." Mulder looks at Jeff and says, "No."

 

Though Joe and Jeff don't move, both appear farther from Mulder's chair.

 

Leo wipes his nose and watches Mulder. In my peripheral vision, I see Leo touch his knife and the holster on his hip, making sure both are present.

 

I add another rule. "No talking, Mulder. I'm trying to save this woman's life. No killing and no talking."

 

Mulder occupies himself by disassembling Leo's rifle.

 

Giving the corner chair a wide berth, Jeff closes the drapes and lights a kerosene lantern. He sets up a backpacking stove on the hearth and, after twenty minutes of muttering and cajoling, gets water boiling.

 

Pretty Lynn opens her eyes. She looks around the shadowy living room, taking in the doilies and blue lace curtains and dated floral wallpaper. "Am I in Mayberry? Aunt Bee?"

 

"You gotta bad fever, baby, but who you think is Opie?" Jeff asks lightly. "Leo, right?"

 

"We're back at the farmhouse in Winchester," Chico Joe tells her. He gives her a sip of the soda and pushes her dark hair back from her face. "Dr. Scully's here. You're going to be okay."

 

She closes her eyes and asks tiredly, "How'd you manage that, Joe?"

 

"I prayed to the Virgin and St. Michael. St. Luke. I couldn't remember the right saint, but Dr. Scully showed up. She has Fox Mulder with her, but she showed up."

 

"St. Agrippina." I smile at Lynn. "The patron saint of infections. How are you feeling?"

 

She shifts weakly. "It hurts."

 

"Joe can give you morphine."

 

"What about a baby? Can I still-"

 

"As soon as you're well. Right now, I want you to rest. Lots of fluids. Stay here a few days until you're back on your feet. No more sleeping in the truck."

 

She nods.

 

Joe doles out morphine and puts the straw to her lips, having her drink again. Leo, thawed from his altercation with Mulder, lifts her feet long enough to sit on the other end of the sofa, and lets her heels rest on his lap. He reaches up to take her hand. With his other hand, he strokes the top of her foot. He keeps an eye on the corner chair. If it's possible to sit at attention, he does.

 

"What you want for dinner, baby?" Jeff asks.

 

Lynn tells him, "A margarita and a salad from Applebee's."

 

Jeff pours pasta into the pot of boiling water. "You got it, you. Maybe gonna taste a little like mac and cheese."

 

She smiles and says, "Show her your pictures." Jeff stirs the pasta, and the other men don't move. "Dr. Scully doesn't like you. Show her your pictures. You, too, Leo."

 

Joe has Lynn raise her head so he can get to his jacket pocket. He shows me a worn photograph of a large Hispanic family at a summer gathering. Joe's in fatigue pants, combat boots, and an undershirt, with his arm around a pregnant woman in a sundress. Joe is clean-shaven, and his face bears no scars. The smiling woman with Joe holds a preschool-aged girl in a swimsuit.

 

"I'm an only son, with five sisters," Joe says easily. "If tea parties and playing Barbie and dress-up made little boys gay, I'd need 'don't ask, don't tell.' My wife and I had two perfect, beautiful girls. That seemed like enough, but my father had a fit. No sons, no one to carry on the name. Keep trying, Jose. God will bless you, Jose. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Papi: we are blessed. We have plenty of hand-me-down school uniforms, and I know how to braid hair and do nails. Girls and tourniquets and M16's: these I know. These, I can handle under fire."

 

Like Skinner, on Kinsey's Sexuality Rating Scale, Joe would hang from the heterosexual end by his fingertips. I lean close to examine the photograph. I see a BBQ grill and a swimming pool in the background. Joe holds a beer bottle with the label peeled at the edges. He looks happy. Relaxed. Normal.

 

"I don't have a picture of Lexi. I had this old photo in my pack. Everything else was back on base. This has everybody, though. My parents, my sisters, Natalie, Allie, and Alexis." Joe touches the image of his wife: a place on her abdomen no bigger than a dime. There's a smudge where he's touched the same spot numerous times before. "Lexi's in there."

 

Cajun Jeff produces two photographs sealed inside Ziploc bags. One shows handsome Jeff with a boy about nineteen. Jeff is beardless and not as lean. He and the young man wear waders and triumphantly hold up strings of fish. In the second photo, Jeff wears scrubs. He sits beside a hospital bed and has a pink-blanketed bundle in each arm. His face is stubbly, and he looks at the camera with a stunned expression. Both pictures are faded and have old tape on the upper edge.

 

"One." Jeff holds up his index finger. "I turn forty, and a couple months later, the baby doctor, he say 'surprise, you getting one, you.' So we get out the old crib, and buy one car seat, one-" Jeff pantomimes a Snugli on his chest. "Buy pink everything. Say we gonna name her 'Oops.' But we get to the hospital and the baby doctor, he look and say 'Surprise, you got one more coming.' I say 'For true? But you do the-" Jeff moves a hand over his abdomen. "'I got one car seat and one kid in college.' Doctor say, 'For true. Better work overtime.' So I say 'Okay, but don't you look up in there a third time. I gonna be out on my boat when I'm eighty, putting all these girls through school.'"

 

He smiles, and I smile with him. Jeff has the same inherent likability as Captain Houston. Also, like Houston, I think Jeff likes to play dumb. Perpetually nonchalant. He may not be as good a shot as Leo and Joe, but Jeff didn't survive this long by being stupid or careless.

 

Blond Leo shows me one photo: a studio portrait with the corners worn from being carried in a wallet. Leo wears a Marine dress uniform with a Special Forces insignia. He looks much the same as now: shorn hair, clean-shaven. A shade less guarded. The lovely woman with him is Southeast Asian. Thai, maybe. She has a little boy on her lap and an older boy, about twelve, beside her. Leo holds his wife's hand. "I don't have a cute story, ma'am," he says.

 

"He has cute stories." Lynn nudges Leo's abdomen with her foot. "Tell Dr. Scully about saying 'May I break wind' in Thai to Malee's family when you meant 'I'm sorry.' Or how your Nebraskan mother got Chinese take-out to make Malee feel welcome in the States. How Aran thought Indian Guides would issue him a rifle like Daddy's. About sneaking Danai's ferret through Customs in your duffle. You have stories. Tell her, Captain Stick-up-your-Ass."

 

Leo gives Lynn a displeased look. Lynn's glassy-eyed, and those stories were pillow talk, I suspect.

 

Instead, Leo says tersely, "Nineteen years with the Marines, fourteen years of marriage, two boys, and a beautiful woman willing to follow me all over the globe. The ships came, and a bee stung me, and it hurt. Joe, Colin, me: every man in my unit got stung, and it just hurt. We held our position and continued our mission until the ships left and we had no one left to protect. That's my story, ma'am. It's Joe's story, too, just not the one he wants to tell you."

 

"You've been vaccinated," I inform him. "You're immune, like Mulder and me. I've encountered other Marines with similar stories. At some point, as part of a government experiment, your unit was vaccinated against the alien reproductive virus, Purity."

 

"Someone knew those ships were coming," Leo replies.

 

I nod. Saying Mulder was one of those someones seems unwise.

 

Lynn's eyes are closed.

 

Leo looks at his picture again. "After, once I made it home, my older son, and Malee, and my mother-in-law: they were gone," Leo says. "Even their bodies. Danai, though, he was five. Danai's grandmother filled his head with Thai legends about flying ghosts and spirits who didn't realize they were dead." He takes a breath, and his soldier-on-guard expression falters. "Danai's body was under the oak tree. He'd been dead for weeks. As far as I could tell, he had a couple stings, but that's it. No- no fucking alien thing inside him. I think everyone died and I didn't come home, so Danai thought he was a ghost. He'd died and didn't know it. I think he climbed the tree and jumped to see if he could fly." Leo pauses, regaining his composure. "Lynn doesn't know that story, ma'am."

 

Joe looks at Lynn, also checking she's sleeping. "Natalie didn't leave our girls. No daycare, no babysitters. They were two and four. They had bee stings, but like Leo said, no alien creature growing inside them, doc. The only building on base still standing was the chapel, and I found them in it - lying on a pew with my old Beretta and Natalie's purse beside them. They looked like they fell asleep during Mass, except for the bullet wounds. Natalie hated that revolver, but I made her learn to use it in case I wasn't there. In case she had to." His voice tightens, and his accent becomes more pronounced. "Blessed Mother, how could Natalie do that to our girls, but how could she not? She knew she'd leave them. Everybody who got stung died or got taken by the ships - except our girls. I wasn't there. How could Nat know I'd come back for them?"

 

Joe sniffs and looks away, and I sniff with him. Hell is here, I think again. On Earth. Hell is Tithonus: living after watching everyone you love die. Maybe the dead were the fortunate ones. We are stunned, scarred survivors battling monsters within and without. We cling to mementoes and noble ideas, and pretend life goes on, but we are mirages of ourselves drifting in a cold, decaying world.

 

Mulder's chair squeaks. I look behind me in the shadowy room. Mulder's still obligingly not killing anyone, but in some spirit of solidarity, he holds out a Polaroid photo. I scoot across the ugly teal and pink rug and take the picture.

 

Unlike the other men's photos, Mulder's isn't worn. It's a snapshot of Mulder with a boy about five or six, taken at an angle and distance suggesting Mulder's holding the instant camera at arm's length. Mulder has the same scar on his face, but less stubble and longer hair. The dark-haired little boy has sleepy hazel eyes and an angular jaw.

 

I look at the Polaroid, and at Mulder.

 

At the Polaroid.

 

At Mulder.

 

"Oh my God," I managed before Mulder retrieves the Polaroid and sits back. He glances at the photo and smiles. He looks, for a fleeting second, like the Mulder I knew. He tucks the picture away and his liquid-metal Terminator face returns.

 

                     ***

 

I take vows seriously: my Hippocratic Oath, my oath to the FBI. In 1972, on a family summer vacation to Yosemite, I got sworn in as a National Park Service Junior Ranger. For much of my childhood, I felt overly responsible for helping Smoky the Bear prevent forest fires.

 

In 1998 though, despite a promise otherwise, I bought Fox Mulder a Christmas gift. I called a friend at NASA and got Mulder a one-of-a-kind scale model of the still-being-built International Space Station. Mulder ripped off the wrapping paper, saw the model, and lit up like the star of Bethlehem.

 

I sat on the leather sofa in Mulder's apartment as he put together and examined the ISS model, as hyper-focused as he was with an X-file. He rooted around his cluttered desk until he found a magazine article about the space station. As _It's a Wonderful Life_ played silently on the television, Mulder went to the kitchen and returned with another beer for himself and none for me. He sat on the sofa, Indian-style, in his socks and t-shirt and jeans, and compared the model to the drawing in the article. If he found any discrepancy, I suspect he planned to hold Congress accountable.

 

Watching him created a pleasant warmth in my abdomen. It made my heart beat faster. Anyone who thought my only joy in life was proving Mulder wrong... Ghostly Lyda's existence remained in doubt, but I deemed her opinion dead wrong.

 

I didn't regret breaking my word one bit, but I held the long, narrow wrapped box Mulder gave me, wondering. What item would compel him to break his promise to me? It didn't smell like a salami or shake like a kaleidoscope or slosh like a small bottle of wine. "Mulder?" I asked, drawing out his name.

 

Mulder didn't look away from the model. If he'd been a dog, he'd have put the little ISS on the rug and rolled on it.

 

I turned the gift-wrapped box over in my hands. "Tell me you didn't get me a vibrating personal massager."

 

I saw a faint surprised expression. He set the little space station aside and finished what was his third beer, based on the empties on the coffee table. "Not just any vibrating personal massager, Scully. You're willing to go ghost-hunting with me on Christmas Eve. You deserve the Cadillac of vibrating personal massagers. The creme de la creme of vibrating personal massagers. _Adult Video News_ gave that thing four stars. I had to put it on lay-away to afford it."

 

Though he didn't fool a soul, I managed to stifle a giggle. "Are you kidding me?"

 

Completely deadpan, he said, "Absolutely not. Ten percent down and payments every Friday to Sally's Discount Sex-O-Rama. Do you know how hard it was to pass up the video bargain bin on my way to the layaway desk every Friday?"

 

In answer, I slid off the sofa and opened the cabinet beneath his TV and VCR. Mulder owned all the _Star Trek_ movies, the _Star Wars_ trilogy, the Zapruder film, and the Patterson Bigfoot film; the remaining VHS tapes were pornographic. None gathered dust. "Too hard?" I tipped out _Sorority Space Hitchhikers III._

 

"Like exploring the old mansion tonight and many of my escapades, the tape seemed like a great idea at the time." His brow furrowed. "I'm convinced they play subliminal messages over the sound system at Sally's Discount Sex-O-Rama."

 

Without comment, I pushed the sorority silicone space hitchhikers back into place, closed the cabinet, and returned to the sofa. On the television screen, an angel showed a despondent Jimmy Stewart a world without him in it.

 

My gift remained on the coffee table. At least two milliseconds passed before Mulder asked, "Are you gonna open it and try it out, or what?" 

 

I had presents to wrap and cookies to bake before tomorrow. I had a mother who was certain I'd end up alone and an older brother who thought I was a masochist. I had nephews who still needed gifts. Soon, Christmas Eve would become Christmas morning.

 

Mulder - brilliant, driven, noble Mulder - left a swath of frustration and hurt and incomplete paperwork in the wake of his crusade for the truth, but I couldn't imagine a world without him in it. The grocery store sold cookies, my nephews loved cash, and my brother and mother were probably right.

 

"Are you gonna get me a beer and something to eat, or what?" I picked up the long box again. I focused my X-ray vision and FBI-woman powers of deduction. "Mulder, you got me the collapsible spyglass, didn't you?"

 

He caught me looking at one in a store window a few weeks ago, as we got some air at lunch. The next week, I passed the window, and the little spyglass hadn't been there.

 

"It be the exact replica of the one Blackbeard used, argh." He grinned. His eyes twinkled as he stood. "Enjoy. I be in the kitchen, wench, slaving over ye Christmas dinner."

 

"Bring me a beer, Captain," I called after him.

 

In the kitchen, Mulder banged pans and cussed at his oven, but returned with a bottle of the same brand of beer he drank. He pried the cap off, handed the bottle over, and sat down on the sofa beside me. He sat - not right beside me - but closer than previously.

 

"Fourteen minutes to Bagel Bites." He raised his bottle. "To, in the absence of the X-files, paramasturbatory illusions that give my life meaning." Mulder clinked his bottle against mine. He rested his arm on the back of the sofa, near my shoulders. "And to a pretty partner who keeps me honest."

 

I took a sip. For half a decade, Mulder gleaned from my lunch instead of getting his own. He might be a lousy tipper, but he bought good suits and good beer. Lately, though, his apartment looked tidier. I'd witnessed him enter his bedroom without scaling a mountain of boxes and magazines. Mulder had food in his kitchen and fresh towels in his bathroom and toilet paper on the holder. He'd spruced up the stage but remained a one-man show. The monsters and conspiracies fueling Mulder's life had also insulated him. Until now. Off the X-files, as we waded through background checks and domestic terrorists, Mulder seemed more human and more alone.

 

After a second swallow of beer, I said, "Mulder, if I didn't know better, I'd think this evening was your unique idea of a date."

 

Mulder shook his head, attesting his innocence. "Dates have more popcorn and less pop psychology-spouting, murderous Christmas ghosts."

 

I opened Mulder's gift to me. I'd predicted correctly. A polished wooden box held the beautiful little brass and mahogany spyglass I'd seen in the store window. I extended the spyglass, turned sideways on the sofa, and focused the lens on Mulder. "You tried to kiss me."

 

"Tonight? That must have been Maurice. Old guy? Gut?" Mulder swirled a finger in the center of his forehead. "Wears a lot of hats?"

 

"This summer." I peered through the scope. So close, his face was a beige blur. "What would you have done if the bee hadn't intervened?"

 

"Tongue," he assured me. "Tongue and second base. And straight to the Brown Chicken Brown Cow. That's how the pros do it."

 

"I have super-human willpower, but how does Agent Fowley and the rest of the Bureau resist ripping your clothes off?"

 

"It boggles the mind, doesn't it?" His eyes twinkled at me again. "Regardless, that wasn't a date, either. Kiss or no kiss, I told you: it's not a date until there's popcorn."

 

"You have kissed me. Also, last month, in the hospital, you said you loved me."

 

"Still not dates." Dear God, Mulder rivaled Houdini at wiggling out of tight spots. "Also, last month, I recall my romantic revelation being met with a dismissive eye roll."

 

"You had a head injury."

 

Instead of more light-hearted banter, he sounded annoyed. "I didn't know the correct year. I still knew you, Scully." 

 

I lowered the spyglass.

 

The ISS model remained on the coffee table. Mulder propped up his sock feet and studied his beer bottle. He peeled the bottle's label at one corner. The oven creaked and groaned in the kitchen and, on the television, Jimmy Stewart had a change of heart and decided to live.

 

After some focused label-peeling, Mulder exhaled and watched the TV. "I don't know. You have the spyglass, Captain; you look ahead and plot the course. On my own, I chase the allegorical white whale wherever it takes me. In the last year or so, I noticed I really like it taking me places with you."

 

Mulder didn't look at me. Or touch me. He continued holding his beer and staring at the television. "Telling you is selfish," he said, "but we've established I'm a selfish bastard where you're concerned. You almost died of cancer, you lost a child and now, instead of discovering the truth about your sister's murder and Emily's death and your abduction- Abductions," he corrected, "your FBI career consists of helping me harass farmers about fertilizer." Mulder resumed label-peeling, getting an entire corner free. "Yes, I love you. And you- I don't know, Scully," he repeated.

 

"Mulder-" I said, with no end of my sentence in sight.

 

"I'm not serious about stealing third and going straight for a home run." He scraped the damp paper and gum with his fingernail. "In case you're wondering. I love third base. Third base is a personal favorite. I could spend hours on third base."

 

I took the bottle from Mulder, set it aside, and took his hand. He stared at our entwined fingers.

 

I kept hoping my perfect sentence would present itself.

 

"I know, Scully. You leave your laptop open. Or, at least, you don't change your password or delete your search history." Mulder watched my hand in his. "A Dr. Parenti's office leaves messages on our office voice mail. AltaVista, the yellow pages, and The Gunmen say he's a fertility specialist. A good one. If that's what you want, I'd be happy for you. I am happy for you. Are you- Is there news?"

 

I took a slow breath. "Dr. Parenti says some of the ova you found are viable. Not all, but some. Viable for in vitro fertilization."

 

"That's great," he said so convincingly I believed him.

 

"I-I- I didn't mean to keep everything secret. Not from you, at least. I've just been waiting for the right time to ask you."

 

After an eternity, he asked in the same tone, "To ask me about in vitro fertilization?"

 

My heart pounded. "Are you willing to do that? To donate?"

 

His hand slid away from mine. Mulder retrieved his beer, took a long drink, and fiddled with the corner of the label again.

 

"Mulder, you can say 'no.' You just said 'I love you,' and I said, 'Thank you; may I use your DNA?'" I touched his wrist. "This isn't something you need to decide right now, or even this month. You may not have to decide at all. I have more tests scheduled, but there's damage-"

 

"Yes." Mulder nodded without making eye contact. "Of course, the answer's 'yes.' I love you. You want this. Tell me what to sign and where to be."

      

I planned to say "Okay," but I'm not sure any sound escaped my lips.

 

After a pause, he said quietly, "My high school girlfriend got pregnant. We were young and stupid and in love. The usual story. Her mother arranged an abortion. My father beat the hell out of me and arranged my early admission to Oxford. I lost Samantha. My parents divorced. Diana left. I watched you watch Emily die. I've never had any family that didn't get ripped apart. I love you, but-" He exhaled. "I'm not eager to go down that road again."

 

"You're not," I said. "I am."

 

"Right." His head fell against the back of the soda. "Nine minutes to Bagel Bites."

 

The smell of warming bread and pizza sauce drifted from Mulder's kitchen. The old Christmas movie continued on the television. Snow fell on Alexandria, and too many seconds passed.

 

"Mulder, I'm so sorry." Mulder's relationship with his late father had two eras: an idyllic time before Samantha's abduction and a horrific after. "That-" I hunted for words. "That happened. With your girlfriend. That's horrible."

 

"It was twenty years ago, Scully." He inhaled. Still watching the water-stained ceiling, he said, "You want a baby. Okay. What I said - I love you - should we pretend I never said it?"

 

"No," I insisted. "No, we shouldn't. I know my timing's horrific, but I don't get any other option, Mulder. If I want a baby, it involves some expensive modern medical science. I can't just say 'I love you' back and skip to the - as you so eloquently put it - Brown Chicken Brown Cow. That's reality. My reality. I was abducted, I was experimented on, and my reproductive system was irreparably damaged. Even in vitro is a long shot."

 

"I know, Scully," he told the ceiling.

 

Heart pounding, I tried a different tack. "If Jack and I had a child - and Jack and I did talk about it - or if Emily had lived, would that be a deal-breaker for you?"

 

"No." His brow furrowed, and he sounded insulted. "God, no."

 

"You're my best friend. Look around." I gestured at Mulder's little apartment, where I sat as the clock ticked toward Christmas morning. "Hell, Mulder: you're my life. Of my own volition. I'm here because I want to be; that must tell you something. I'm not negating your love or denying I feel something in return or repudiating a romantic future together. Nothing can change between us, or everything can change. That's up to us. My having a baby, by necessity, is separate."

 

Mulder seemed to consider those words. To himself, he repeated, "'I'm not repudiating a romantic future together.' That belongs on a Hallmark card." At seven minutes to Bagel Bites, he asked, "What do you feel in return, Scully?"

 

"Dyspneic. Tachycardiac," I recited. "Paresthesiac. It's either a surge in the monoamines associated with human pair bonding, or a panic attack; I'd need a comprehensive hormone panel and a serotonin serum level to be certain."

 

The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement, and my tachycardia slowed from life-threatening to merely concerning. "Only for you," he told me. "That's love. I don't masturbate into a cup for anyone but you, partner."

 

"That belongs on a Hallmark card, Mulder."

 

"Right now, let's have this: beer and television and Bagel Bites after an evening of Christmas Eve ghost hunting. My idea of a lovely night, though not a date. Dates have popcorn."

 

"Okay."

 

On a commercial break, Mulder picked up the ISS model again. The little space station launched from the leather arm of the sofa and arched gracefully over Mulder's legs and into the air, the symbol of humanity's future, our hopes, our faith in science and our wonder at the unknown.

 

And it crashed.

 

Into me.

 

                     ***

 

Cajun Jeff never tells his story: the story Lynn doesn't know. I suspect Jeff's story involves returning from his boat to find his wife and son harvested and his infant girls dead from exposure or dehydration. I wonder if he buried them, the way Mulder buried the baby in the minivan.

 

I wonder if that's the only infant Mulder's buried. The reality of After, outside the shelter of Alpha Colony, continues settling over me until even my bones seem cold.

 

As night arrives in earnest, Mulder eases from his chair in the slow, fluid way a predator takes his first step toward prey. He watches the men, glancing between them as if he changes channels between their thoughts. Lynn still sleeps. Jeff has put a plate of food aside for her.

 

"What, Mulder?" I ask as he looms beside me.

 

He shows me the Jeep keys. He hasn't brought anything into the house. He hasn't eaten. I didn't realize the farmhouse was a pit-stop at my request, not a place to spend the night.

 

"No. I'm not leaving her. She's too sick."

 

Mulder tilts his head. With some effort, he informs me, "She's dying."

 

"You're not the medical doctor. I'm not letting her die," I tell him angrily. "Go get whatever we need from the Jeep. We're staying here tonight."

 

Mulder's head tilts to the other side. Slowly. Cunningly. Silently. Unhappily. I hear Joe and Leo inhale, and see Jeff ease back. My heartbeat quickens. For a moment, I expect Mulder to jerk me away from the sofa and out of the house, but he turns and walks outside. Not speaking. Not killing anyone. With a Polaroid photo in his pocket of a boy who is clearly Mulder's son.

 

Or clone. I wonder if the boy is a clone. Or one of the consortium's creations, like Emily. Or if the boy's genetically mine, created in Dr. Parenti's lab. Mulder's immune to Purity, I'm immune to Purity. Our hypothetical child would be immune, as well. I wonder if Dr. Parenti, for whatever reason, implanted our embryos in another woman, and Mulder's found that child. I wonder if the boy is sick. Or has died, and that's prompted Mulder's bizarre behavior and return to Alpha Colony. Did Mulder return to tell me our son died?

 

"What he mean: she dyin'?" Jeff asks softly.

 

"Mulder's mistaken."

 

"He readin' your mind. You a medical doctor. How he can be mistaken?"

 

Instead of answering, I say, "Her fever is down. The antibiotics are working. I don't want her moved tomorrow, but you'll be able to continue home within a few days. As long as she feels well enough, you can start trying to conceive after her next menstrual cycle."

 

Leo also speaks quietly - like Mulder can't hear him. "If you don't want to go back to Alpha Colony, we could use a doctor, ma'am. No one's forcing anyone, and no one's hungry or cold at our place. Please." He sounds so human, so earnest. "Dr. Scully, you saved Lynn; at least let us take you someplace safe. You get Fox Mulder to sleep. Tonight." He doesn't elaborate, but I understand. "He won't feel a thing, I promise, but he has to be asleep. I don't know how to kill a man who can read my mind while he's awake." Leo pauses as if considering. "He'll know I said that to you, won't he?"

 

I nod. Leo eyes the rifle Mulder's propped against the wall, beside the 'no killing, no talking' chair.

 

I hear Mulder outside sternly tell the darkness, "In bed, now."

 

No one's outside except Mulder.

 

"You tryin' to walk a panther on a leash," Jeff says. "Maybe you know Fox Mulder, Before. Maybe you love him. Maybe he even still love you, cher, but a panther's a panther. You let Leo and Joe take him out, you. You come with us, take care of Lynn. You want company some night, you say the word. If you don't, ain't nobody gonna insist. 'Cept Joe kinda like to play with your feet."

 

"Once she feels better, let's have Lynn make a chart," Joe responds, nonplussed. "See who gets the most gold stars: me, Captain Stick-up-his-Ass, or a pretty Louisiana swamp-rat."

 

Jeff gestures for Joe to bring it on.

 

"If you hurt Fox Mulder," I say, "awake, asleep, tonight, or next year: on the off chance Mulder doesn't kill you, I will not only let Lynn die, I will leave you three gut-shot and paralyzed but much conscious so you can watch the rats and buzzards and insects feed on your viscera for as long as it takes to die of sepsis. Do you know how long it takes an adult man to die of sepsis?"

 

None of the three men must know, because I don't get an answer.

 

Mulder returns with a sleeping bag and my backpack. I follow him to a room down the hall. Joe's stretched out in front of the sofa. I glance back; Jeff and Leo watch me walk away.

 

"Why did you tell them Lynn's dying?" I demand in a whisper as soon as Mulder closes the bedroom door. The farmhouse's living room is a museum to the 1950's, but this room's dark ornate furniture belongs on the Titanic. Mulder didn't bring in a lantern, so the only light comes from the moon outside. I put my holster on the nightstand, beside a wind-up alarm clock.

 

Mulder tosses a sleeping bag on the bed. He starts undressing. Not his boots and jacket; he strips to the skin and comes to me. He begins unbuttoning my shirt.

 

"You gotta be kidding me, Mulder." I'm exhausted and sunburnt and malodorous and regretting turning down Jeff's offer of mac and cheese. "Stop that and answer me."

 

Mulder's expression, in the moonlight, looks perplexed. As if he thinks I've malfunctioned. He resumes undressing me.

 

I push his hands aside. "No." I turn around, unbuttoning my own shirt. I perform some sleight of hand to take off my bra but leave my t-shirt on. The musty bedroom feels about 55 degrees.

 

Mulder steps close behind me, nude, sliding his hands around my waist and beneath my t-shirt. His fingers cover my breasts, squeezing, as he kisses my neck.

 

"Stop," I order in a firm whisper. I hear Jeff and Leo talking in the living room. Their voices are indistinct. "Listen to me," I hiss at Mulder. "No."

 

"In bed, now," Mulder says sternly. "You're not listening."

 

I jerk away, grab my weapon from the nightstand, and point it at Mulder. "No means no. You're the one who's not listening."

 

"No?" Mulder says as if I'm speaking a language he doesn't comprehend. As if my pistol pointed at him is a sign of affection.

 

Male voices continue in the living room.

 

"I want some answers. I want to know what's happened to you and where you're taking me and I want to know about that little boy," I whisper. "Is he alive? Is he your son?"

 

The veil between Mulder and reality seems to lift, or at least thin. Mulder nods. He worries his mouth. "I don't have a cute story."

 

"But you do have a story. Where is he? Am I his biological mother? Or is he like Emily? Did the aliens or CGB Spender create that child to control you? Did Dr. Parenti do this with our embryos?"

 

I get a blanket, "No."

 

"No?" I echo. "But he is your son? He was created with a human woman through mundane human coitus?"

 

My throat's closing off, but Mulder sounds like his old self. "I'd like to think it wasn't mundane."

 

I guess wildly. "Diana Fowley?"

 

He shakes his head 'no.' 

 

"Mulder, it doesn't make sense. The math doesn't add up. That boy's five or six years old, and you did not have an infant son, Before."

 

Mulder holds up his hand, palm toward me, thumb folded down and four fingers up.

 

Four. The boy's four years old. Conceived After, not Before.

 

A hailstorm of awful questions pelts my mind, each leaving a tiny mark. I think of the pregnant woman at Alpha Colony's gate, and this morning, when Mulder thought I was someone else. An alien shape-shifter or a woman he'd kidnapped. Hurt.

 

Mulder's head tilts like the puzzled puppy on the RCA record label. "You're angry."

 

"I'm not," I lie. My bones feel strangely permeable, and my sympathetic nervous system edges into the red zone. "I'm surprised. I'm, I'm- If this is what you want, I'm happy for you."

 

"I can hear you, Scully." Mulder's lips purse again but no words form. He looks at me emptily. He stands naked in the moonlight, slim and scarred, a broken angel.

 

I set the pistol on the nightstand with a thump and sit down hard on the old bed. The bedsprings creak. The male voices pause in the living room. I cover my face with my hands and exhale wearily. "Does your son have a name?" I ask, and don't get a response.

 

I look up. Mulder hasn't moved.

 

He doesn't speak, but I hear his voice in my memory: words from another old farm house, another lifetime. Every woman on the planet except me is, according to Mulder, 'some other pretty woman.' As I think it, he glances at me.

 

"Come here," I tell him, before he develops hypothermia. "It's okay."

 

I pull off my shoes, skin off my jeans and, in my t-shirt and panties, socks and chill bumps, flop down on the chenille bedspread. I gesture for Mulder to lie with me. He curls up behind me, still nude. Once again, he uses one sleeping bag to cover both of us. We could get under the covers, but the Missouri crew stopped here before Alpha Colony. With an outhouse and a usable well, I suspect the farmhouse is a popular place to spend the night. I bet if I had a black light, I wouldn't even sit on the bedspread.

 

"It needs to rain sleeping bags," I tell Mulder, as he moves even closer. "Maybe I'll get warm."

 

He takes a breath as if preparing to speak, but doesn't. His fingers stroke my waist like my skin is precious fabric. I feel his penis against my bottom, partially erect. His skin is warm. His breath against my skin is warm. His body, inside mine, would be warm.

 

"Where is your son?"

 

"With his mother."

 

That's a logical and predictable answer. The little boy isn't alone in the Badlands or asleep in the back of the Jeep. If he'd been in the Indian Guides bunkhouse, I would have noticed last night, as I straddled his father naked on a mattress on the floor. A child that young should be with a mother. Still, I expected Mulder to say 'at daycare.' I expect Mulder's child not to have a mother, the way I'd thought my hypothetical baby wouldn't have a father.

 

Mulder listens intently now, making concentration difficult. My thoughts assemble like random socks pulled from a dryer. That Mulder loves me. I love him. That the world has ended and he has a son and I'm trying to walk a panther on a leash.

 

I remember an important fact. "They talked about killing you."

 

Mulder kisses my neck again. Cheek. Earlobe. His hand cups my breast. Slips beneath my t-shirt. Down the front of my panties. His touch is different than Skinner's: poetry rather than prose, a gentle summer rain rather than a storm. I feel drawn to him at a molecular level; my electrons have gaps that require his for the world to remain in balance.

 

He slides my panties off and rolls me to face him. He kisses me as if heedless of time. He doesn't speak, but I feel him listening. Listening to how I feel as he touches me, embraces me, enters me. I gasp.

 

The voices from the other end of the house stop. They must hear us.

 

Mulder pauses as if scanning the minds in the living room. He says, "You're mine," and thrusts. The old bed frame protests, but I let him love me for what seems the remainder of the night. However he wants, as long and hard as he wants. Jeff and Joe and Leo can listen and take notes. I am Mulder's, I think over and over, like a mantra. I am Mulder's. This other woman, this son: it doesn't matter. Mulder's my guy. He's inside my body and my mind, and he's all around me.

 

I wake before dawn to a sound so foreign seconds pass before I recognize it. I wait for Prichard to knock on my bedroom door. Or for Skinner to deliver coffee and ask if I'm coming to breakfast. Instead, I hear rain drumming on the farmhouse roof.

 

Mulder is absent from the bed, and Lynn, against my medical advice, is absent from the sofa. Absent from the house. As are Jeff, Joe, and Leo, and their sleeping bags, duffle bags, lantern, and camp stove. The white Suburban is absent from the driveway. I never heard it start; the Missouri crew had to put Lynn in it and push the big SUV away from the house in the darkness, as we slept.

 

As I slept, at least. I couldn't swear Mulder actually sleeps.

 

Mulder still has Leo's rifle. Mulder's zipped the top closed on the Jeep. He offers coffee. I ask about the Missouri crew, and he looks at me blankly. I ask about his son. His son's mother. CGB Spender. The past five years. Why Mulder returned to Alpha Colony. Where he's taking me.

 

I give up and content myself with the coffee.

 

I take the cup with me in the Jeep. Back on paved road, the rain muddies a new little grave on the hillside. The windshield wipers slap rhythmically. Elvis sings on the stereo. Without a word, Mulder turns west.

 

                     ***

 

"Scully, you were in that shower for an eternity," Fox Mulder informs me, and the sound of his voice startles me as I step from the bathroom. "We counted."

 

My heart beats faster. "I doubt that," I say out of habit. "You can't count an eternity, even using transfinite numbers and all your fingers and toes."

 

Mulder lies on my bed in my old apartment, his head on the pillows and his long legs crossed at the ankle. He's clean and fed and undamaged except for the marks of men: gunshot wounds and knife wounds and wounds I know how to heal. My Mulder from Before wears his casual winter weekend uniform: a dark sweater and blue jeans. Beside him, a tiny, dark-haired baby sleeps wrapped in a crocheted blue blanket. I recognize the blanket; my mother crocheted identical ones for my nephews.

 

An ache fills my chest as a warm tingle forms low in my belly. It's my baby; the soreness from giving birth lingers between my legs.

 

Beyond the bed, the woman reflected in my dresser mirror has chin-length wet hair combed straight back. She's flushed, and she wears my old robe. Her nails are manicured, her eyebrows waxed. A little gold cross glitters at the base of her throat. She looks so much like a woman I once knew: a medical doctor and an FBI agent assigned to the X-files. But she has a baby, and her partner lounges in her bed.

 

I want - even more than I want to pick up the baby - to touch Mulder and have him not startle. To hear his voice again. To lie in bed with him and not be afraid.

 

"No other woman on Earth spends so long bathing, even in porn," Mulder continues. He sits up, glances down at the baby, and swings his legs over the side of the bed. "Not even if three lesbian cheerleaders wash each other everywhere."

 

I tie the fabric belt of my bathrobe and, in bare feet, pad toward the bed. "At some point, this baby will learn to talk," I hear myself caution. "Do you really want his first words to be 'lesbian threesome'?"

 

Mulder pushes his eyebrows together. "I was kinda hoping. He's obviously an athletic demi-god and an intellectual giant, but I thought the voiceless labiodental fricatives in 'Philadelphia experiment' might be setting the bar too high this early."

 

Blowing sleet tinkles against the windows. Snowdrifts surround the cars parked along the curb and cover the fire hydrant. Mulder's left the bedroom closet open, and I see his suits hanging beside mine. I hear the kitchen radio broadcasting some basketball game, and smell simmering beef stew. A dog-eared book on subliminal advertising lays on the nightstand, beside an empty baby bottle and an unfamiliar issue of _JAMA_.

 

Everything seems real: the textures, the smells, the mundane details making up a life. Crazy thoughts move into attack formation around me. Could it be real? Could Mulder and I have had a baby, Before - A baby I left behind to die with millions of others? How could I have forgotten? How could Mulder have let me leave our child or forget?

 

This isn't my life, though. Each time I speak, I feel like an actor surprised she recalls her line. Mulder probably thinks a 'voiceless labiodental fricative' is a mime performing dentistry. Also, Mulder spent a few nights, but he never lived at my apartment. We never made love here. We never had a baby. Despite all the cycles of in vitro, I got one positive pregnancy test, a few bouts of morning sickness and, four weeks later, two hours of sobbing as Mulder held me.

 

This is a day that never happened and a child that never happened. A life Mulder and I never got the chance to have.

 

"Did you wash everywhere?" The bed creaks as Mulder gets up, moving slowly so he doesn't wake the baby. As I go to the window, Mulder approaches behind me. The cold outside presses through the glass pane. "Want me to check before I go?" He puts his palms on my shoulders and kisses the side of my neck.

 

"Go?" my voice echoes. "It's Snowmageddon outside."

 

"Preventing Armageddon trumps Snowmageddon. AD Skinner called. He has Alex Krycek in a holding cell and a solid lead on Cancerman's location."

 

In this world, on this winter afternoon, Mulder doesn't ask if the baby and I will be fine because we will. I don't ask if he'll return, because he will. Mulder has a crusade. He'll save the world, but he'll return, and we'll be waiting.

 

Mulder's hands outline my shoulders as his lips travel down my collarbone. I smell baby lotion and gun oil on his skin. I lean into him, warm, pliant. For a few precious seconds, there is peace, but his lips leave my shoulder.

 

Mulder looks out the window. I look with him. Outside, the snow clouds glow an unearthly red. In the distance, on the horizon, an unfathomably large, gray craft appears. I watch it approach, bringing darkness with it. A beam of light appears below the ship, sweeping, searching. The warmth inside me turns to cold, angry quaking.

 

Don't, I think. You alien creatures that, scientifically, shouldn't be here: don't. We fought so hard, waited so long. Don't spoil this.

 

I look at the tiny baby asleep on the bed. I glance at my weapon on the dresser. I feel soft, weak. I look back at Mulder, who stands with me, one man watching extinction sweep toward us.

 

"Don't go, Mulder." I put my hand over his. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing you can do, no one left to protect. If it's the end, we die together. We said that's how it ends: you and me. Together."

 

Millions must perish before he says, "Okay, Scully," and kisses my shoulder again. His boots remain in front of the closet, and his holster on the dresser, beside mine. Time stretches out like a final bite of chocolate, savored and made to last on the tongue. The tiny baby appears in my arms. Mulder touches me, whispers to me, and permeates my life with his presence. The snow falls outside, but we're warm. Blessed with miracles beyond measure. We have somewhere between seconds and an eternity before the world ends.

 

"My God, I wish this was real," I say as he embraces me and darkness approaches.

 

"Me too, Scully," Mulder responds. "My God, me too."

 

                     ***

 

I wake to the hum of the Jeep's engine and knobby tires, and Mulder holding my hand as he drives. Rain patters against the windshield. Mulder's put a blanket over me, but cold presses through the passenger-side window to my face, and an ache lingers between my legs.

 

Mulder navigates more seemingly endless roads through endless farmland. I see no sign of people. No sound from other automobiles. No odd faces or glowing eyes in dirty windows. The rain makes the time of day indeterminate. We've crossed from western Kentucky into southern Illinois, and abandoned cars clog the main roads. On the highway, Mulder drives along the berm or in the median, but mostly he sticks to gravel or dirt back roads. A different Elvis CD plays, and a few red maple trees dot the distance.

 

I still don't know if Mulder sleeps. Or ever eats more than a few bites. He's unshaven and has worn the same jeans since we left Alpha Colony. He seldom speaks, but Mulder seems more human away from other humans. Less like a schizophrenic alpha predator, at least.

 

"Can you hear my dreams?"

 

He nods.

 

"I love you," I say aloud, though I know he knows. I want to know I said it and know he heard me.

 

With my FBI and medical training, and an electron microscope, I detect a hint of a smile.

 

I've given up asking what happened to him. I've stopped asking about Lynn and the Missouri crew, or about the little boy in the photograph. Or the boy's mother. Or why Mulder took me from Alpha Colony. Why he needed Skinner and me, or where we're going. Maybe we're going nowhere at all, but I'm alive, and Mulder's alive, and the world hasn't quite ended. Fence posts and fallen telephone poles and empty fields blur past, and his hand is my lifeline.

 

As if to spite my faith in him, Mulder jumps, and tells the wet windshield angrily, "I told you he'd bite you."

 

Nothing bit me.

 

"Geese are mean. Leave him alone," he orders.

 

I crane my neck. I don't see geese flying north for the winter or huddled down in the fields to wait out the storm. "Who are you talking to?"

 

Mulder lets go of my hand. He guides the Jeep onto a gravel path. "Right now," Mulder says, and drives faster.

 

He takes the right fork in the road and continues another mile before he stops to unlock and open a rusted gate. He doesn't close the gate. After another half-mile or so, I see a farmhouse and barn ahead in the distance, but Mulder looks left. I look with him and, amid the raindrops, spot a dark-haired little boy scampering toward us across a muddy field.

 

Mulder stops the Jeep and takes my hand again. I feel energy flowing from him and pressure as he listens to me. My eyes tear and my chest aches and I smile, all at once, like I'm in the eye of a painful, beautiful storm.

 

Mulder got exactly what I wanted, and he didn't want. Not really. Not for his own sake.

 

I know he hears me thinking it, but I can't stop.

 

Mulder opens his door, and the boy bounds onto Mulder's lap. The child is soaked from the waist up and mud-spattered from the waist down. He wears a filthy, pinstriped little Yankees’ baseball jersey, and he clutches an old Skippy peanut butter jar with holes poked in the rusted metal lid. The boy shivers, and a tadpole sloshes inside the jar.

 

I turn the Jeep's heater up.

 

Mulder gets his jacket from the backseat and wraps it around the boy. The Jeep idles as Mulder holds him close. Once the shivering stops, the boy shows Mulder an index finger with a recent pinch mark. Mulder gives the finger a kiss, gives the boy's wet curls a kiss, and puts the Jeep in gear again, headed toward the house. The boy remains on Mulder's lap, wrapped in the jacket and holding the tadpole's jar.

 

A slim woman appears on the porch, carrying a toddler and wearing jeans and a green windbreaker. The wind billows her jacket and blows her blonde hair back from her pretty face. Her rubber boots are muddy. The toddler in her arms wears a pink knit hat and has a runny nose. The woman's face would launch a thousand ships, but her expression is empty.

 

Smoke rises from the chimney. A nearby garden lies fallow. I note a broken windowpane, a baseball glove and a butterfly net on the porch, and two trucks parked beside a ramshackle barn: one with a clean windshield, and one with a flat tire and rust creeping up the hood. A gutted deer carcass hangs from a tree, near a woodpile. Far from the house - farther than I think a small child should roam - I spot a pond dotted with mean, finger-pinching geese.

 

Mulder stops the Jeep. The little boy remains on Mulder's lap. The woman steps to the edge of the warped porch, carrying the baby. Through the windshield, as the wipers slap back and forth, Mulder watches her. I read familiarity and protectiveness and fondness in his posture. The woman turns her head. A bruise mars her cheek. I'm a medical doctor; the bruise is twenty-four hours old at the most.

 

Twenty-four hours ago, Fox Mulder was with me.

 

I stay buckled into the passenger seat, the silent observer, the third wheel to this family reunion. Mulder's family. This is Mulder's family: this woman, a son, a baby. A family which, in no way, includes me.

 

I remind myself every woman on the planet except me is 'some other pretty woman.' In this case, she's some other pretty woman who happens to be the mother of his children.

 

That sentence seems exponentially wrong.

 

Mulder sets the Jeep's parking brake and lets the engine idle. "Dana Scully," he says, though he isn't talking to me. He's introducing me - to a woman who shouldn't hear him with the vehicle's windows up. He nods, barely moving his head. "Alpha Colony," he says next. And, "Because you're his mother. I don't have to love you."

 

The woman bounces the toddler on her hip. A pained wrinkle appears between her brows and her lower lip quivers.

 

"He won't come after you," Mulder says, arriving at more words than he's spoken to me all day. "I'll kill him." Again, as if answering a question, he says, "Bring her. Get away before he figures it out. I'm not coming back."

 

Carrying the baby, the blonde woman takes a step toward the Jeep and the storm. But a familiar man steps out of the farmhouse: the undying cockroach of the Consortium. Alex Krycek, still in his leather jacket and still missing an arm. The woman stops. Her eyes close, her brow wrinkles, and she bites her lower lip between her teeth. On the porch, without speaking, Krycek takes the toddler. He doesn't threaten her or Mulder. Alex Krycek holds the baby girl in his arms. Arm.

 

My puzzle pieces fit together. The edges, at least. The blonde woman can leave with Mulder and Mulder's son, but not with Krycek's daughter.

 

The boy slides to the Jeep's center console. Mulder's hand rests on his weapon, waiting. Rain pelts the Jeep's canvas roof and drips from the porch's eaves. The windshield begins to fog.

 

The baby starts crying. Krycek lets it. At the sound, the woman steps backward. She takes the toddler, and her vacant expression returns.

 

Mulder opens the driver-side door and eases out of the Jeep and into the rain, moving like a big cat on the prowl. He doesn't watch Krycek, but Alex Krycek's eyes never leave him. Mulder opens the back of the Jeep. He lifts out a big storage container - his box of food and bottled water. Mulder carries the container to the porch and sets it on the steps, beyond the rain's reach. Mulder makes a second trip, this time leaving two containers of gasoline and Skinner's M16. Rain soaks his shirt and drips from the end of his nose. Mulder gets a military backpack and little toy space shuttle from the barn. He stops in front of the Jeep: a slim, damaged statue in the rain. For a long moment, he stands eerily still in the muddy yard as the heavens weep. I wipe a circle in the foggy windshield with my sleeve.

 

The woman watches the porch's warped floorboards, not Mulder.

 

Kill Krycek and take her, I think, though he's not listening to me. Don't give her a choice. Take the woman, take the baby, and get them someplace safe.

 

The windshield has fogged again by the time Mulder returns to the Jeep, closes the back, and slides behind the wheel, still holding the toy spaceship. Defeated. Soaked, shivering, he sniffs as he turns on the windshield defogger. His Adam's apple bobs. He watches the house. Mulder might not love this woman, or have ever loved her, but I'm not certain all the wetness on his face is rain. The little boy looks at his father, for the first time seeming concerned.

 

Krycek, the blonde woman, and the baby girl remain on the porch. Krycek looks victorious. The woman looks broken. The baby's nose still runs.

 

As I move to take Mulder's hand, to comfort him, he inhales. He gives me the toy space shuttle. Mulder squares his shoulders. He folds his fingers and thumb into a fist and extends his hand to his son. The boy bumps his knuckles against Mulder's.

 

Mulder releases the parking brake, puts the Jeep in gear, and turns around in the driveway. I put the toy shuttle aside and look back at the porch as we drive away. The woman has gone inside the ramshackle house with Krycek and the toddler.

 

Mulder doesn't look back.

 

The boy has no suitcase. He has the tadpole, the toy space shuttle, and a big backpack that must be Mulder's. Mulder left all our food and water, and most of our fuel.

 

The storm whips tree branches and the Jeep's roof. The little boy doesn't cry for his mother, or wave, or do anything I expect. As Mulder drives, his son studies me with curious hazel eyes. Like I'm a mythical creature from a book. I may be the first woman besides his mother he's encountered, and perhaps that's the fascination. He's slim and tall, like Mulder and his mother, which makes him look older. His clothes and skin are wet. Dirt forms dark half-moons beneath his fingernails and in the creases of his neck and inner elbows. He's eaten something red and sticky recently; a smear remains around his mouth. He has Mulder's full lips and bone structure, but his mother's nose. His hair is dark, like Mulder's, and forms big, tangled curls. I bet it's never been cut. The boy wears denim jeans, the little baseball jersey, and a muddy, miniature version of the rubber boots his mother wears.

 

He's eerily silent, like his father.

 

The boy looks at Mulder, seeming perplexed. I sense I should do something I'm not. Introduce myself. Do a magic trick. Ask the tadpole's name.

 

I offer the boy the Army blanket. The toy space shuttle. His puzzled look continues.

 

"Her hair is red," Mulder says. "I see it green. I see wrong."

 

Heedless of child seatbelt safety laws, the boy perches on the center console, holding the tadpole jar and scrutinizing me.

 

"I have to talk out loud," the boy says with breath smelling like too-sweet strawberries. "Mulder says you can't hear. Alex can't hear."

 

"But you can." A chill goes through me. "Your mother can. Your little sister can."

 

The boy nods. He grins, and he looks like Mulder.

 

My Mulder. Not the scarred, dangerous, telepathic man driving the Jeep, but the boy looks like my Mulder. My lonely guy in the basement who believed we were not alone.

 

                     ***

 

In retrospect, I realize the Consortium wanted me to keep Mulder from saving the world. Superficially, the Bureau assigned me as Mulder's partner in an attempt at salvaging a brilliant profiling mind seemingly bent on self-destruction and professional humiliation. Get Fox Mulder, the FBI's problem child, to follow investigative procedure. Apply modern forensic science to the bizarre cases he insisted on investigating. Rein him in. Keep Agent Mulder from shouting to the heavens the truth was out there and, more problematically, demanding someone tell him what that truth was.

 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation might as well have assigned me to turn water to wine. Mulder had a quest. Sometimes he wanted to find his sister, sometimes he wanted to prove UFO's or government conspiracies existed. Cure my cancer. Catch a killer. Mulder might radically redefine his quest between Monday night and Tuesday morning, but he always had one - and I always respected his passion and perseverance, if not his reasoning.

 

Also, after five years as Mulder's partner, I had no doubt evil lurked in our nation's shadows. Mulder and I just disagreed on evil's taxonomy.

 

I'd barely regained consciousness as Mulder's voice demanded, "Tell me you saw it, Scully."

 

He sat on the edge of a folding metal chair, wearing an open parka and holding a mug of coffee. He hadn't shaved in several days, and his cheeks and forehead looked sunburned.

 

I'd submitted reports swearing I observed mutants and human clones, illegal government experiments and Jurassic-sized alligators. I'd held a frozen alien fetus - or a remarkable facsimile of a frozen alien fetus. I'd been abducted and experimented on. I'd had a microchip pulled from my neck. I'd found a protein sequence imbedded in my smallpox vaccination site recorded in a Social Security database. I'd had doctors put another microchip in my neck that cured a supposedly incurable cancer. I'd discovered a child created from my ovum and paid for that child's funeral. Whatever Mulder's latest 'it' was, in September 1998, 'it' could wait while I determined my location and circumstances. Brushed my teeth. Gotten a cup of coffee.

 

I looked around the little room with its low ceiling and empty walls. A single bare bulb screwed into a generic white socket on the ceiling. I lay in a hospital bed in a room too dim and sparse for any hospital. A medical clinic, I presumed. Possibly a small military hospital. I wore a hospital gown. A thick, heavy blanket covered the bed. A military warming blanket: I saw the chemical heat panels. My gown had 'AAD' printed on it, though I couldn't fathom what it stood for.

 

"Do you remember?" Mulder asked. "The ship, Scully. There was a ship."

 

I didn't bother answering. A spaceship, a ghost ship: of course, Mulder thought he'd seen a ship. Found a ship. Sunk a ship. Maybe I'd ended up in a hospital bed after Mulder convinced me to investigate the Hindenburg airship or the wreck of the Titanic.

 

Through the open doorway, I saw a steel counter with a microscope, an autoclave, and a centrifuge. The smallest, most basic equipment necessary for a medical laboratory. White walls held more stainless-steel shelves and cabinets, and the little windows held views of white nothingness. My fingers and toes ached from cold, but whoever put in my IV did a good job. I didn't have a catheter, so I hadn't been unconscious long. No monitor, either, so my cardiac and pulmonary function must be stable. I required rest and warming and rehydration, but nothing else.

 

"Casey Station, in Wilkes Land, Antarctica," Mulder said impatiently. "A bee carrying an alien virus stung you. I found you, administered a vaccine, and I haven't slept in about seventy-two hours. You're welcome. There's a twenty-thousand-dollar chartered flight on my Bureau credit card, along with a five-thousand-dollar deposit on a Snowcat. Also, Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield has informed me they don't cover medical services rendered at the South Pole. Scully, tell me you saw the ship."

 

"How much coffee have you had, Mulder?" I scooted up in the bed. I felt stiff, but I noticed no pain or difficulty moving. The gown parted, and cold air met my bare back. "Antarctica? Are you kidding me?"

 

AAD. The Australian Antarctic Division. I looked through the high windows again, at the endless snowfield outside. Oh my God, I remember thinking. Whatever this nonsense was about viruses and bees and ships, I had a more pressing concern: getting home from Antarctica without my wallet, badge, or passport. Or underwear. Or shoes.

 

I touched the base of my throat. "Mulder, my cross-"

 

He produced the delicate gold chain from his coat pocket. "I'm not kidding; I saw penguins. And I saw you naked again. Serial killers make it seem so easy, but there's no dignified way to carry a naked, unconscious woman. I'm sorry." He paused. "They're still really nice breasts."

 

I took my necklace and stared at Mulder, trying to get a toehold on reality while he sprinted miles ahead. "We were in Dallas. The bomb exploded. I examined the bodies. We saw bees in Dallas. We flew back to DC for my hearing. I resigned from the FBI. When was I stung by a bee?"

 

"In the hall outside my apartment. As I was kissing you," he said, still sounding like a teletype machine. "You said you saw the ship. Tell me you remember."

 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." I held up a traffic cop hand. "Why were you kissing me, Agent Way Over-Caffeinated?"

 

"I was not acting alone," Mulder replied. "The ambulance I called was intercepted, someone shot me, and you were brought here. Or, fifty kilometers from here, specifically, to a spaceship buried beneath the ice. I saw humans gestating an alien life form inside them - a product of the virus. I injected you with the vaccine, but the ship became unstable and lifted off. We barely escaped, and the ship flew right over us. I know you saw it."

 

I sat up. "Where were you shot? Have you seen a doctor, Mulder?"

 

"That was in DC, days ago," he said dismissively. "I'm fine."

 

"You're sunburned. Exhausted. Probably dehydrated. Tell whoever's running this place you need an IV drip, a thousand milligrams of acetaminophen, and the bed I'm currently occupying." I paused for breath. "A twenty-thousand-dollar chartered flight?"

 

Mulder leaned toward me. The warm steam from his coffee rose between us. "You're not dead," he said succinctly. "The Bureau can bill me."

 

Seeing his expression, his certainty: the tide of reality caught up with me.

 

I closed my eyes, trying to think. My fingers curled around the cross and gold chain in my palm. Jumbled images and sensations flashed across my mind. A sharp bee sting, my throat closing off, the odd warmness of hypothermia setting in. Feeling Mulder hurriedly putting clothing on me. "I don't remember you kissing me."

 

"That, I can recreate. Shower, brush your teeth, and say the word. Right now, you smell like morning breath and alien amniotic fluid."

 

I opened my eyes and gave him a sidelong, annoyed look. Fox Mulder hadn't yet revealed himself as the love of my life, but he edged into contention as he passed me his cup of coffee. And chartered a twenty-thousand-dollar flight to Antarctica.

 

I looked at the snow outside and the AAD's printed on my thin hospital gown. The IV in my hand. I had no previous allergy to bee stings. Nor did bee stings spread any known virus to humans. Who infected someone with a virus, kidnapped them, and took them to Antarctica? An evil scientist with an invisible Learjet?

 

I took a sip of Mulder's coffee.

 

"I was talking to the scientists and staff while you were unconscious," Mulder said. "We're in luck. Per capita, the South Pole has more paranormal occurrences than anyplace else on the planet. Phantom whaling ships, haunted explorers' huts, demonic polar bears. People see all sorts of things down here."

     

"Firstly, the 'per capita' here is limited and a self-selecting demographic. Secondly, monotony and isolation are known causes of paranoia and hallucinations. Insomnia brought on by months of sunlight would worsen those symptoms." I eased my necklace over my head so the little cross rested in its usual place. "Thirdly, polar bears live at the North Pole, Mulder. If you see one, it's not demonic. It's very, very lost."

 

Mulder's victorious fist punched the air above his head. "Agent Scully's back, ladies and gentlemen," he announced to our audience of no one. "Spouting scientific facts and second guessing my every move. Keeping me honest."

 

"I'll administer the acetaminophen rectally."

 

"Would you?" His words oozed sarcasm. "Would you wear your doctor coat while you do it? Because that would totally make up for watching you stop breathing yesterday. It would balance out thinking you were dead. Or worse than dead: on their ship, strapped down, helpless, terrified, violated, tortured. Turning to gelatinous goo. Thinking I was too late, I lost you, I failed again. Do it, Scully."

 

I sighed and took his hand. Even in the Antarctic, Mulder's hand felt warm. "Twenty-thousand-dollars, partner. We're supposed to be on Domestic Terrorism. The Bureau's gonna fire us."

 

"You already quit, and I don't care," Mulder said. "You're not dead. I found your necklace. I can get my deposit back on the Snowcat. Beyond that, put the cherry on my sundae, Scully. Tell me you remember seeing the spaceship."

 

After two more sips of coffee, I put the mug aside and lay down. Mulder folded the blanket over me and resumed holding my hand.

 

"We kissed?" That seemed as odd as waking in Antarctica or his bizarre story about an alien virus transmitted by bees. I knew Fox Mulder. He'd call my apartment at two AM, telling me to be ready in ten minutes to fly to Alaska or possibly New Mexico - we'd figure it out at the airport. He'd believe any bizarre UFO story right up to the minute he decided he believed none of them. I knew Mulder would put his life on the line for me but, except for Agent Fowley's recent appearance, Mulder's crusade left time for nothing more than centerfolds and video porn stars. I didn't realize kissing anyone - let alone me - factored into Mulder's universe. "Really kissed?"

 

"We tried. There was Apis Interruptus." He squeezed my hand. "Come on Scully. Remember."

 

I closed my eyes and concentrated. I remembered the cold. Gasping for breath. Hearing Mulder's voice as he shoved my legs into pants and my arms into a coat. Drifting in and out of consciousness. Waking to Mulder's face above mine, and him ordering me to breathe. Being sprawled on the snow and seeing something pass overhead. Something large and gray that wasn't an airplane. Memory was so fallible, and he spoon-fed me what he wanted me to remember. In my written report, I'd note that. I'd probably answer questions about it in some hearing. Still, "I saw something," I told Mulder. "I can't testify to what, but something."

 

"Some unidentified, flying object?"

 

I nodded. "What I witnessed would meet that criteria."

 

"That's my girl." Mulder grinned the boyish, exuberant, wondrous grin that was my bat signal for misadventure.

 

I never remembered almost kissing Mulder in the hallway outside his apartment, but as he looked at me in that cold little room, I understood why I might have wanted to kiss him. Fox Mulder: the modern-day crusader with his heart on his sleeve and his course set on saving humanity. Brilliant and uncompromising and unapologetic about his beliefs.

 

My brilliant, uncompromising, unapologetic crusader had ants in his pants even beyond what my admission about the UFO warranted.

 

"What are you not telling me?" I asked skeptically.

 

Mulder leaned forward and put his chin on top of my hand, which he still held. His beard felt scratchy, and a million galaxies sparkled in his eyes. "The Gunmen have the bee, Scully. The bee that stung you. If you can isolate the alien virus in that bee, and if it matches the remnants of the virus in your body, I have proof to give the FBI along with my big pile of receipts."

 

"Those are two big 'if's,' Mulder." I toyed with my cross.

 

Neither his grin nor the sparkle dimmed. "Yesterday, I didn't know if I'd ever see you alive again, so I think I'm on a roll, Scully. Come on." He sat back. "Get up. Let's get back to DC, get you in a lab, and get started on saving the world."

 

Since no doctor appeared to tell me I couldn't, I sat up. I took out my IV and swung my legs over the side of the bed. "I'm going to need some clothes and a passport before I can save the world, Mulder. Maybe a coat."

 

My brilliant, uncompromising, unapologetic crusader - also a thirty-six-year-old, red-blooded, male - had nodded. "Nipply in here, isn't it?"

 

In retrospect, maybe I'd loved Mulder even then.

 

                     ***

 

Mulder has once again lost the power of non-psychic communication, so I've stooped to interrogating the four-year-old. So far, I've learned the tadpole's name is "Skippy," Mulder gave the boy the toy space shuttle, and the pretty blonde woman on the porch with Alex Krycek was "Marita."

 

"Covarrubias?" I ask the boy, who nods. Mulder's given him a package of Lifesavers, the only food we possess. Though Mulder has a booster seat in the back of the Jeep, the boy remains on the center console, swinging his muddy boots and eating candy as Mulder drives through the rainstorm. "Marita Covarrubias?"

 

I recognize the name, but I'd never seen Mulder's informant until today. I envisioned Marita Covarrubias as an elegantly graying senator's or ambassador's wife, not a tall, slim blonde who looks like she belongs in a 1940's Hollywood movie.

 

I want to know how Mulder and Marita met, After. How they conceived this child - the reason; I understand Tab A and Slot B. Pure solace? Did he mistake Marita for me? Was Mulder listening to me and making love to her? I want to know where Mulder's taking us with three gallons of fuel, and what he thinks we'll eat and drink once we get there.

 

An awful, jealous, petty part of me wants to know if Mulder ever loved Marita, even a little.

 

I feel Mulder listening, but he doesn't answer.

 

Mulder didn't leave Marita. She's left him for Alex Krycek - and I think Mulder's been living in their barn - but whatever the circumstances of this child's conception and birth, during the eternal nuclear winter After, Mulder didn't leave Marita and the boy.

 

If I'd been pregnant in the bunker, would you still have left, I think.

 

Mulder nods. Yes.

 

The boy shares the package of Lifesavers with Mulder in a one-for-you, one-for-me method. None for me. I hold the tadpole jar.

 

Mulder stops the Jeep to close the metal gate he opened on the way to the farm. The boy watches me. As we wait, I feel a light, erratic pressure inside my head, like a puppy sniffing around.

 

"Mulder wants you to like me," the boy announces as his father returns. The boy speaks like Gibson Praise: as if relaying messages from his own internal radio station. "Alex doesn't like me. I'm a pain in the ass. A freak. He hates that little bastard."

 

I start to speak, but Mulder opens his mouth. Instead of curbing the boy's language, Mulder tells him, "I like you, buddy."

 

A long needle pierces my bruised heart. The boy hears our thoughts; he knows. Mulder, the perpetually disappointing son, wanted to say it.

 

As we reach the paved road, Mulder's son climbs into the back and belts himself into the booster seat. The psychic conversation resumes. Mulder's face remains blank, but he glances at his son and at me. The boy plays with the toy space shuttle and kicks my seat. I feel him inside my head, listening again, a childlike presence that skips around rather than focuses. Mulder listens, too. I try to think of Oscar the Grouch and Euclidean geometry, but end up remembering Mulder in the abandoned cabin, two nights ago. In the farmhouse on the noisy old bed, last night. Naked, sweaty, gasping, thrusting, and convulsing in a manner not acceptable for late night Cinemax, let alone Sesame Street.

 

"That's gross," the boy says, seeming not entirely truthful and to address the front seat in general. "Except for kissing. I'd kiss a girl."

 

The corner of Mulder's mouth twitches. "Scully's a girl."

 

"Scully's your girl," the boy responds.

 

Mulder nods in agreement. He turns west again, and I see the sun glowing beyond the storm clouds.

 

A second roll of Lifesavers atop the stack of Elvis CD's wobbles like it's vibrated by the engine.

 

"No," Mulder says firmly. "You ate a whole jar of jam."

 

The wobbling stops.

 

                     ***

 

No justice remains in a ruined world. Life is short, nasty, and brutish. Flowers still bloom and clouds still float effortlessly across the sky, but any glimmer of hope for humanity gets snuffed out.

 

All they wanted was a family. I don't hold the Missouri crew up as a shining example of morality, nor do I want to join their quaint plural marriage, but they wanted what every survivor wants: for life to go on.

 

Ahead on the state highway, the big white Suburban SUV is stopped sideways on a bridge. Engine off, several doors open, it blocks the road. I see one body on the ground - dark-haired, so either Joe or Jeff. Once we're closer, Mulder stops the Jeep and gets out, seeming unconcerned. The boy scrambles out, as well.

 

The rain ended a few miles ago. The setting sun glows pink and orange, washing the damp world in warm light in defense of the cool autumn breeze.

 

Skid marks on the gray asphalt ahead recount evasive driving. A big west-bound vehicle slid sideways, turned 180 degrees - a difficult maneuver in the long SUV - and took off east. Someone set a trap, putting snipers ahead of and behind them. Bullet holes punctuate the back of the Suburban, and two holes pierce the windshield.

 

Chico Joe lies on the pavement behind the SUV, his brown eyes open to the darkening sky but seeing nothing. His right shoulder is bent at an unnatural angle. Dislocated. A pistol rests nearby. The magazine is empty, and the blood beneath his body congealed. Blond Leo slumps behind the steering wheel with a bullet hole in his forehead.

 

The back of the Suburban holds sleeping bags and duffle bags and empty IV bags and pillows, but no Lynn. I find spent casings and the ugly afghan from the Kentucky farmhouse.

 

"They take her, them," Jeff's voice says. He sits on the pavement with his back against a guardrail. He has an arm across his abdomen, against a gunshot wound. Given how long the two other men have been dead, I'm amazed he's still alive. "They take Lynn. You see them in my head?" he asks, struggling to speak.

 

I see nothing in his head, but Mulder comes up behind me, pistol in his hand, and looks down at Cajun Jeff. There's nothing I can do to help Jeff. I can ease his pain, but I can't save him, even if I had him in a hospital right now.

 

Jeff has his photographs out: the teenage boy and the twin baby girls. The pictures lay on the buckled pavement beside him, still in Zip-lock bags. He puts a bloody hand on them so they can't blow away.

 

"You see our place in my head?" Jeff asks Mulder. "Fifty miles west, just over the Missouri line. You tell Captain Colin Fox. He go after her. He don't let them hurt her or sell her."

 

Mulder doesn't speak or nod.

 

The boy runs up, seeming curious. Jeff smiles weakly at him.

 

"They were gonna kill you anyway," Mulder tells Jeff flatly.

 

Jeff nods. He knows.

 

I don't think Mulder means whoever took Lynn would kill Jeff; he means Leo and Joe. I told Leo and Joe they, and therefore their children, were immune to Purity. There's no evidence Jeff shares that immunity or could pass it to Lynn's future child.

 

Last night, these men seemed normal. Damaged and dangerous, but normal. Of course, Mulder looks normal, except he's pointing a pistol at Jeff. In front of a nonplussed four-year-old.

 

"You tell GI Fox," Jeff repeats. "All you gotta do."

 

"I will," I say, and startle as Mulder pulls the trigger.

 

Blood spatters my jeans and jacket. Jeff's body slouches sideways into the wet, brown weeds. The boy looks disappointed and scampers off.

 

As I stand on the road, Mulder removes the duffle bag of medical supplies from the SUV, and he puts the bag in the Jeep. The men who took Lynn wanted only Lynn. Mulder collects two sleeping bags and pilfers a few other valuables. Mulder empties their containers of gasoline into the Jeep's gas tank. He pushes Leo's body aside, starts the SUV, and guides the vehicle across the bridge and onto the berm. The Suburban's gas gauge must be low. Mulder paints a white X on the hood and the door: no fuel, nothing valuable. Mulder returns to the Jeep.

 

Leo's body remains in the SUV. Joe and Jeff lie on the road.

 

Mulder's son returns with a grasshopper so large it fills his hand. "No," Mulder says, and the insect gets released into the weeds along the guardrail. The boy's evening ruined by having to free a potential pet and having his father execute a potential friend, the child scuffs his feet to the Jeep and climbs in.

 

Mulder placates him with the remaining roll of Lifesavers.

 

Mulder won't bury these bodies, and he won't go after Lynn. He won't even deliver the message to the lone man awaiting Lynn and Leo and the others' return. I don't need to ask Mulder; I know it. Mulder sees these people the way early man must have viewed Neanderthals. The way the alien colonists must view us. Simple. Inefficient. Inferior.

 

Once again, Ahsan Moovera could accurately diagnosis shock. My insides quake, and my feet root to the pavement as I stare at the bodies. I've tied a thread of normal to the outer gate of Alpha Colony, and the farther I am from it, the more normal unravels.

 

I don't move, so Mulder tries to guide me back to the Jeep. Buzzards circle overhead.

 

"Give me the shovel," I hear my voice tell him. "I'll do it. You have a shovel. Give me the shovel."

 

Mulder glances at the darkening sky.

 

"I don't care," I bark at him. "We're not monsters. I let you leave Skinner's body; I'm not leaving them here. I'm burying them, and we're delivering Jeff's message about Lynn."

 

He tilts his head, looking emptily perplexed.

 

"You're a father. Is this the world you want for your son?" I ask.

 

Mulder has no expression. No remorse. No hesitance.

 

In the end, we compromise. Mulder carries Joe and Jeff's bodies to the Suburban and dumps them in the back. I put Jeff's pictures in his coat pocket. Mulder drives the Suburban and I follow in the Jeep. There's a quarry within a few miles. At the edge, Mulder gets out and lets the SUV idle over the cliff, taking the men's bodies with it. Within minutes, the vehicle sinks into the murky water at the bottom.

 

A burial at sea - or at least, in water - for the two Marines. Jeff had a boat; he must have liked water. They deserve a proper funeral, but this is the best I can do. I say a prayer for them. I'll remember their names and this place so, if I ever see Byers or anyone from Alpha Colony again, I can tell them, and Byers can update his map.

 

Chico Joe, Blond Leo, and Cajun Jeff. In red. Near Grover's Mill, Illinois. The Badlands. October 2005.

 

                     ***

 

The Centers for Disease Control became the Atlantis of After. Men insisted on going, even though Skinner assured them nothing remained of Atlanta. Upstate New York and the Gulf Coast shared second place for mythical civilizations. Men talked about colonies in Montreal and Guatemala the way Mulder once insisted the truth was out there. If those colonies existed, they existed as Alpha Colony did: carved from the ruin by hard labor, wired together with rusting technology, and blurring the moral edge of what was right and what was necessary.

 

As much as we craved it, no utopia lurked beyond the horizon, but people needed hope. Even standing in front of Byers' map, they wanted to believe something survived somewhere. The men without hope, without some reason to keep breathing- It didn't take long for their name to change from green to red on Byers' map.

 

"I need to know," Moovera said one April morning over breakfast, in his calm, cordial way. He planned to brave the Badlands, and sail to India in search of his wife and sister. He would travel to Moscow in search of his adult son. Handsome Moovera had never admitted being a government assassin, but if anyone could survive The Badlands and whatever lay beyond them, it would be precise, polite, deadly Ahsan Moovera.

 

Skinner had been shifting reconstituted scrambled eggs around his plate rather than eating them. He put down his fork. After many seconds of consideration, he said, "Okay," though Moovera didn't need permission to leave Alpha Colony. Skinner added, "I respect that," though I doubted he did.

 

"There's nothing for me here," Moovera said, and I couldn't argue. Our God was not his. Our culture: a foreign fascination to him. Our slowly growing collection of traumatized women: not of his caste. He would never marry again, never have another family. Amy - the young woman we rescued from the rovers early last winter - Moovera and Houston never found her sister. The most dangerous man alive spent his days checking the commissary inventory and delegating KP duty.

 

That morning, I gathered a first aid kit as Skinner assembled provisions. I carried the bag of bandages and medication outside, and expected spring. Flowers. I hoped for new green grass after so many long, frigid winters. Instead, gray clouds hung over the valley, and a miserable wind cut through my scrubs and long johns. Mud occupied any space ice didn't. Either sleet or frigid rain drizzled down; the sky couldn't commit.

 

Moovera packed the bed of his gray Toyota pickup truck in his orderly manner. Spare tires, extra batteries, a sleeping bag and winter tent, a cook set and camp stove, and enough weaponry to outfit a SWAT team. All labeled. In the passenger seat, I saw maps, notes, nautical charts.

 

He glanced at his wristwatch. "7:32," he told me for no reason. "Time to get on the road, Dr. Scully."

 

My hair curled in the damp cold, and the wind blew through me. I crossed my arms, trying not to shiver. Skinner continued adding to the back of the truck. I saw a toolbox go in and another gas can. Men came by to bid Moovera farewell. Safe travels.

 

His wife and sister and son were dead. The entire planet was as empty and dead as this day. Moovera wouldn't find his family on some other continent; he'd find death - alone, afraid, cold, and hundreds or thousands of miles from the ragged band of people who cared about him. We knew that. I suspect he knew it, too.

 

Moovera told me goodbye. I watched as he and Skinner shook hands and said their goodbyes in the rain. They promised to write, and laughed, the way brave men liked to laugh at death. I waved with a lump in my throat as the little Toyota truck rolled away.

 

I wanted to go with Moovera. To drive toward whatever was out there, even death. I wanted to know. I wanted to leave the safety of Alpha Colony and go after Mulder, as Mulder came for me so many times.

 

Skinner stood behind me with his arm across my chest and his warm chin atop my head, shielding me from some of the miserable rain. "He'll come back," I said. "If he doesn't find his family, Moovera said he'll come back."

 

Skinner said tersely, "He won't," and walked away, leaving me standing alone on the wet road in front of the bunker.

 

As the Toyota truck waited on the guards to open the gate, I heard another vehicle in the distance. The little school bus, I assumed, but tires squealed around a turn. After a second shriek of rubber against slick asphalt, Lawrence North's truck approached the bunker at a rate meaning a nicked artery or severed digit.

 

I didn't see Lawrence. Amy, Lawrence's young wife, drove, holding the steering wheel with one hand and her week-old baby with her other arm. The guards opened the gate but had Moovera wait and gestured for Amy not to stop. To drive the baby directly to the bunker's west entrance.

 

The men yelled for me. I yelled for someone to alert Prichard.

 

That infant was healthy when I delivered it and healthy the following day. Lawrence promised Amy took care of the baby, and Lawrence would if Amy couldn't. Newborns dehydrated so quickly, though. Became hypothermic. I had no way to vaccinate, but nursing provided Amy's immunities. Still, the baby could have stopped breathing, or spiked a fever, or had an intra-ventricular hemorrhage, or any of a million things I had minimal resources to treat.

 

Amy slammed on the brakes at the gate. She skidded across the pavement to stop bumper-to-bumper with Moovera's little truck.

 

Her hand gripped the steering wheel. Her windshield wipers slapped back and forth at top speed. Amy laid the baby on the seat, opened the driver-side door, and leapt out. Cynthia, Lawrence's ancient German shepherd, popped her head up in the cab, seeming perplexed. As Amy ran to Moovera's little truck, the guards and other men outside the bunker's west entrance shared Cynthia's expression.

 

Moovera opened his door, got out, and stood facing young Amy. The weather gods committed: cruel April sleet settled on his cropped black hair, now silver at the temples. He'd turned his windshield wipers off; the wipers on Lawrence's truck flailed frantically in the driver's absence.

 

Today's velour tracksuit was loose and lilac, and worn with pink and white Sketchers tennis shoes. A lilac scrunchie held her long, curly brown hair in a low ponytail. Now, her breasts were larger and her belly abruptly flat, but Amy dressed like a modest version of Sporty Spice. Maternity velour tracksuits existed; Brewster's foragers had found them for her.

 

As she looked up at Moovera, Amy's lips moved.

 

I monitored Amy's pregnancy and delivered her baby, but I'd never heard her speak. She would nod if I asked a question, but we'd had to clear the bunker before Lawrence could persuade her into the medical clinic for an ultrasound. If I made house calls, Amy brought tea or coffee. She offered muffins Lawrence said she'd baked. Once, I arrived to her cutting Lawrence's hair in the kitchen. Another time, Lawrence, despite the temperature being forty degrees, sat on his front porch reading a _Delta Force_ novel as Amy appreciated Hanson's _MMMBop_ inside his house. She'd smile timidly as Lawrence teased her, and she'd frowned as I suggested more fruits and vegetables, less Fruitopia. But Amy did not speak, she didn't venture far from Lawrence, and she disliked being within twenty feet of any other man.

 

But Moovera probably didn't look like the men who'd hurt her.

 

Now, white vapor formed in front of her mouth, and Moovera's. Amy's. His again. Hers.

 

I reached Moovera's truck in time to hear him say, "I can bring them to Purgatory. Alive," he added, as if that was an important stipulation. "You can watch from inside the gates."

 

Amy nodded, seeming pacified.

 

"Mrs. North is fine, Dr. Scully," Moovera said without looking back at me. "Her daughter is fine. There's no medical emergency. Mrs. North wants me to stay in Alpha Colony. Her husband mentioned my plans, and she was concerned."

 

I stopped, with my hair and clothing damp, and my skin covered in chill bumps. 'Mrs. North' looked like a college coed who'd borrowed her dad's truck and wandered into a land of mud and olive drab and automatic weapons. Moovera was a well-groomed, well-organized killer who dabbled with normal people and classic cars in his spare time. At no point did Amy's and Moovera's worlds cross paths.

 

"If we ever find her sister, Mrs. North wants me to help with the rescue. Bring her sister to Alpha Colony. Mrs. North wants me to bring the rovers here. All of them. Alive." Amy continued looking up at him expectantly. "This time, she doesn't want Captain Houston or Director Skinner to shoot them. She would like to see them to suffer. For quite some time."

 

His calm, courteous tone made me shiver.

 

Amy seemed to notice me. She glanced nervously at the gathered men. Rain dampened her hair and shoulders. She looked down. Two wet spots the size of half-dollars dotted her chest. She put an arm across her breasts. Eyes wide, she scurried into Lawrence's truck and closed the door. Locked the door. Picked up the tiny infant.

 

Moovera got in his little truck, shifted the transmission into reverse, and returned to the bunker.

 

Amy and her new baby were fine. I waited beside the vehicle, and Lawrence arrived in a neighbor's car within minutes. Like a country and western song played backwards, he got his young family and old truck and very old dog back.

 

By 7:54AM, Ahsan Moovera inventoried and labeled supplies, delegated jobs, and ensured White Sulphur Springs and the bunker below it ran perfectly and on time.

 

We never found any sign of Amy's sister. The girl had to be dead, but Moovera still checked the map in the dining hall. He'd be in there early in the morning and before lights out. The dots stretched from Calgary to Cuba. He'd stand with me and study the black dots, and red and yellow and green names. The nameless descriptions: anything matching the sister, dead or alive. Sometimes months passed without any changes to Byers' map. And Byers, the traders, the foragers - the men who collected those names and descriptions - would have alerted him to any matches. Moovera still checked at least once a day, scanning with a sniper's silent, patient, hyper-focus.

 

He didn't mention leaving Alpha Colony again. He had a reason to remain. A reason to live. A bone-chilling reason, I thought when I sat across from him at meals and made polite conversation. But a reason.

 

I remembered the whole story, alone in my bed that never quite got warm, while Mulder listened: the deadliest man alive and the battered, brave girl who needed him.

 

Mulder continued listening, so I thought the whole story again, trying to remember all the details. The little bits of sleet on Moovera's hair, the scrambled eggs Skinner left on his plate in the cafeteria. Amy's breath and tracksuit and brown curls in the damp air. The storm clouds hanging low over the valley and my yearning to be free. To know.

 

Mulder still listened. Long after midnight, I slid my hand down the front of my pajama bottoms, beneath the long underwear and panties. Mulder liked listening to that, too.

 

                     ***

 

We are an unhappy fellowship in a barren, inhumane land. The boy, still in wet clothes and dirty boots, sleeps in the backseat. Mulder, equally damp and filthy, drives. The full moon rises above the fog, and the wind punishes the Jeep's soft top. Skippy the Tadpole sloshes in his peanut butter jar.

 

I don't know how far we travel in the darkness, but not fifty miles. Because if Mulder passes the farm he glimpsed in dying Jeff's head, I'll find a pair of bone cutters and amputate his pinkie. Mulder can drive without a pinkie. He can kill without a pinkie. He's psychic without a pinkie. He's still a father without a pinkie. I don't see any problem with my plan.

 

As Mulder turns off a pot-holed paved road and onto a gravel road, he removes one hand from the steering wheel and flexes the fingers. That's the pinkie, Mulder, I think. Mr. Digitus minimus manus on the port side, at the second metacarpal. Do nothing to save Lynn-

 

Mulder looks at me. The Jeep's tires clatter across a cattle guard.

 

-Dying Lynn, I know. Un-immune, un-psychic, boring, pretty Lynn who only wants to have a baby with one of her husbands before she dies. Do nothing to save Lynn, and you'll never wear matching pinkie rings.

 

He flexes his fingers again. "They won't touch her," Mulder says in defense of his digit. "She's sick. Frightened."

 

"How many men?" I ask as we bump-bump across a second cattle guard.

 

"Two. Brothers. They've watched her for months. They don't want to hurt her."

 

"They murdered her, her- Her men. Abducted her. How is that not hurting her?"

 

Mulder turns the steering wheel again. The gravel road becomes rutted dirt tracks through scrub brush. "Do you think Lynn's men got Lynn from an Internet dating site," Mulder asks, "or met her at the bar at Applebee's?"

 

I'm silent as Mulder stops to open and close a metal gate. A rusted brown sign indicates a forest service road. After a few foggy miles, the forest road devolves into a muddy path through trees and overgrown brush. Branches scrape the sides of the Jeep, clawing at us. As I predict Mulder's taken another wrong turn, the trees end. A minute later, the headlights find the blackened skeleton of a large farmhouse atop a rise, and a tall, dark stable.

 

The old stable door is padlocked, but Mulder has a key.

 

Mulder drives the Jeep inside the stable and parks beside a military Humvee. He slides the broad wooden door closed and latches it. At the flick of a switch, an overhead bulb glows to life: a rare event outside Alpha Colony. Mulder gathers up his sleeping son from the back seat. We must be spending the night.

 

I wonder if Mulder's collecting a child at every stop. Exactly how much solace he's required since the colonist's ships left, or how many women he's abducted or mistaken for me. Soon we'll need a minivan.

 

Mulder gives me another look before he carries the little boy up some old wooden stairs: expressionlessly displeased.

 

Mr. Digitus Littlest Expendablest, I think loudly.

 

I get out of the Jeep stiffly and look around. Supplies fill the stalls. I see weapons, water, candles, toilet paper, propane tanks, RV batteries and fuel containers stored in Mulderish piles and stacks. He's nailed a half-empty pack of Morley cigarettes to a post. In the tack room, along with a row of sawhorses holding saddles, I find books on advanced first aid, and a wooden counter of dusty medical supplies: prescription antibiotic bottles and gauze pads and alcohol, suture kits and more instant cold packs. Neosporin and Barney Band-Aids.

 

A Polaroid camera sits on a shelf, and photos of the boy decorate one wall. Several photos look as if the boy's playing with the camera, taking pictures of himself and Mulder. One photo is the boy's close-up, scrunched-up face. Another is a blurry butterfly. In another, Mulder's shirtless and standing in water up to his waist. The sky behind him is bright blue, and the scars on his chest and shoulder stand out against his tan torso. Mulder gestures for the photographer to come into the water, toward him. He's taken his son swimming.

 

Mulder has the photograph of Samantha that ran in the newspapers, after her disappearance. He also has a newspaper photo of me. Me in a cranberry-colored suit and dark heels, wearing the FBI badge now in my pack. I'm emerging from some police station while Mulder and I worked some case. My shoulder pads and hair suggest 1996. I remember the suit, but not the case.

 

There's a hand-drawn map of Alpha Colony. A list of familiar names: Steven Redman and Lawrence North and Ahsan Moovera. Amy, Dmitry, Julie. Beside each name, Mulder's made notes - details he's culled from my or someone's thoughts. Beside Skinner's name, Mulder's written, 'He knows' in blue ink and 'He loves her' in black.

 

The apartment upstairs has a wide bed, a wood-burning stove, a sofa, a little table, and a dorm-sized refrigerator. A bathroom. An overhead light and a stationary ceiling fan. Food fills the kitchen shelves and firewood is stacked beside the stove. Broad, roughhewn boards form the floor, and equally stout rafters support the roof. Black-out drapes cover the windows - not to block out daylight, I assume, but to keep others from seeing his lights at night. There are colorful wooden blocks and a wooden train set, but no baby furniture or baby supplies. I see no sign of a woman's presence either, but my brilliant, telepathic sociopath and his son, at least for the past year or so, had a home.

 

The boy sleeps on the sofa beneath a blue blanket doubled over twice. His muddy little boots are on the floor, and the tadpole's jar and the space shuttle sit on an end table. Mulder's son hasn't eaten except for two packs of Lifesavers. Maroon specks dot his cheek: spatters of Jeff's blood. The tadpole doesn't look in great shape, either.

 

I'm exhausted, and sore, and smelly, and heartsick, and each of my 206 bones aches in a distinct, yet equally miserable manner. I want a hot shower. A hot shower, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in a warm, safe bed. I want Mulder to promise Lynn will be safe until morning. I want Mulder to promise he won't kill anyone else in front of his son.

 

Mulder the Indian Guide starts a fire in the stove by dousing a few pieces of wood with half a bottle of lighter fluid and dropping a match. In the bathroom, as I watch, he adjusts some levers below a metal box on the wall. He opens the valve on a tank of propane. Mulder nods for me to turn on the showerhead.

 

Pipes gurgle. Ice-cold water falls from the showerhead to the tile floor.

 

He revisits the maze of pipes. He checks the propane valve. He examines the propane tank. Checks something on the metal box. I hear optimistic clicking and valiant heating-like noises, but the water remains so cold it's barely in a liquid state. All the knobs and levers and connections get checked a third time. Lawrence North rigged a similar system in his house for Amy, but I never gleaned any sense of how the setup worked. To me, it's a complicated intersection of water and a propane flame and sorcery. Given a manual and the right tools, Lawrence could fix the weather. Fox Mulder shares no such talent.

 

Proving my point, Mulder curses and smacks the side of the metal box hard with his palm. "Try it now."

 

A post-colonization miracle occurs. Hot water falls from the showerhead. Mulder holds up his matching, attached pinkies. Both fingers have dried blood around the nail.

 

"You're still on thin ice," I say, but unbutton my shirt.

 

I wash everywhere twice. Wash my hair. I find, borrow, and put back Mulder's razor. I linger beneath the hot water until my skin reddens and my muscles relax. I emerge from the shower to find Mulder's taken my dirty clothing. A clean towel awaits me, as does a man's t-shirt.

 

Mulder's also in dry clothes, and somewhat cleaner. Unshaven. Barefooted. The boy dozes on the sofa while Mulder puts clean sheets on the bed. Mulder gets the blankets and pillows back in place, and he disposes of the old sheets by tossing them into the stove. While I showered, Mulder's also wiped his son's face and stripped off the child's dirty clothing. A little bare foot peeks from beneath the blanket. The apartment has warmed, but I adjust the blanket to cover his foot. The boy's eyes open sleepily.

 

Two glass tumblers of wine wait on the table, beside an open wine bottle. The burgundy, according to the label, came from the Cote de Nuits in 1975; the Star Wars tumblers Mulder's using, according to the bottom, came from Burger King.

 

I sip French burgundy from a chipped Chewbacca tumbler. "This is nice." Very nice. If you have to ask, you can't afford it nice.

 

Mulder leans back against the kitchen counter. After seconds to remember how sounds aloud form words, he says, "I inherited a Humvee from some rovers last year. They had a case in the back."

 

"Inherited a Humvee, or stole?"

 

"Can't steal from the dead, Scully."

 

"Technically, you can," I remind him, and take another sip. "It's called grave-robbing."

 

He looks at me. Really looks at me: warm, kind. Familiar. Even faintly amused. In a voice only a little flat, with an expression only a little off, he answers, "Not if there's no grave."

 

I wonder if I'm still in the Jeep, asleep, as Mulder drives.

 

"A panther on a leash," Dead Jeff's voice cautions, but I don't listen. I step toward Mulder and put my hand on his waist. I close my eyes, and I kiss him. Gently, longingly. Mulder's sampled his Lando Calrissian glass; his mouth tastes of fine red wine.

 

It's Mulder who pulls back. He looks past me, goes to the sofa, and squats down. The boy's awake. His son doesn't speak, but Mulder nods. He sits on the sofa, pulls the boy on his lap, and covers him with the blanket.

 

I look around the little apartment. God knows how Mulder discovered this place. We're miles from any highway, and our route through the forest rivaled a labyrinth. The building's well-provisioned. The three of us could live here for the winter. The stable has running water, and a septic system, and solar or wind power. Mulder can forage for whatever we need, and I can stay with the boy. We can act like we're normal people in a normal little home with normal little lives.

 

On the sofa, Mulder and his sleepy son converse. The boy's inherited some maternal grandparent's ability to display facial expression, and Mulder says, "Tomorrow." A minute later, "When you're big." Given their glances at me, I'm the topic. "They have chickens," Mulder tells him, which seems to appease the boy.

 

I refill my glass and sit on the other end of the sofa. The boy's foot escapes the blanket. I cover his toes again.

 

Mulder picks up the toy space shuttle. It's a scale model of the Discovery, the shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope and carried parts and supplies to build the International Space Station. It's the workhorse that ferried evidence of mankind's wonder at the universe, and our naive curiosity at what lay beyond our little world. Mulder makes it sail through the air and land safely on his son's chest for the night. The boy's sound asleep.

 

Watching them, being here, I want to believe Mulder's not irreparably broken. He needs sleep. Food. Safety. Medication, maybe. He needs to plant a garden and play catch with his son and remember the man he once was. The man I loved. Love. He needs to know he's loved, and he needs to stop fulfilling his 1.3 murder-per-day quota.

 

Mulder's son is the future: an immune, telepathic child who can pass his immunity and telepathy on. If the boy or his sister live and reproduce, humanity - or, the next evolutionary step beyond humanity - has a chance.

 

I ask in a whisper, "What's his name?"

 

I think it's a reasonable, even banal, question, but Mulder looks like he forgot where he parked at the mall.

 

"Doesn't he have a name? Your son? He calls you 'Mulder' and his mother 'Marita.' What do you call him?"

 

Mulder touches his forehead with his index finger. "We see him."

 

At present, I don't possess the mental resources necessary to process that, so after two big sips of wine, I ask, "He likes chickens?"

 

Mulder nods.

 

"I like him," I say softly. "I'd like to get a look at some of his DNA sequences and perform a CT scan, but I like him."

 

Mulder maneuvers the bundle of blanket and sleeping little boy off his lap and moves toward me. The fire crackles. Mulder takes my hand. "I need you to do something, Scully."

 

"What?"

 

"Take him back. Tomorrow. So he's safe. So you're safe."

 

I lower the tumbler. "Take- Take your son back to Alpha Colony?"

 

Mulder nods.

 

Alpha Colony won't let Mulder in. No colony will let Mulder in, even if I'm part of the deal. "Without you?"

 

He nods again.

 

"He's your son," I protest. "Mulder, no. You can protect him. You've taken care of him this long, and I'm here now; we can protect him." But I think of formidable Leo with the bullet in his head. Joe dead on the highway. I think of Brewster, more than able to defend and provide for himself, returning to Alpha Colony with his teenage son's body in a coffin. "I can't take him away from you."

 

"I hear him. He won't be away from me."

 

I stare at Mulder, trying to get my mouth to work. "Was that why you came? You wanted Skinner and me to raise your son in Alpha Colony?"

 

Another nod. Mulder's eyes are apologetic but earnest. "Skinner knows about him, Scully; he doesn't want you to know. Skinner loves you, and he's a good man. He'll protect my son for your sake. He'll even love my son for your sake."

 

An invisible hand tightens around my throat.

 

Mulder moves closer. "I need you, Scully. You know what he is, and you're right; this isn't the world I want for him. He should have friends. Baby chicks. Fireworks. I'm- I'm- I can't. His mother can't." He picks up some strands of my long, damp hair and tucks them behind my ear. He smells of sun-warmed vineyards. "You can't stay here. You know that. You have to take him and go back. Let Skinner keep the two of you safe."

 

Dazed, I manage a nod.

 

"He can do things now," Mulder whispers. His lips touch the base of my throat, where my cross necklace isn't. "Miraculous things. I want to hear you and know- Know you're happy, not just safe."

 

Despite the warm apartment, I'm trembling. Mulder's hands on my body restore some balance to the universe, but not all.

 

"I love you," he whispers in my ear, and trails a fingertip gently down my throat. "No matter what I am, don't ever doubt I love you. You're my girl." He kisses a path from my neck to the base of my throat. "Come to bed. Please. Let me touch you one last time."

 

"The boy- Your son-" The bed's across the room.

 

"He's not listening," Mulder assures me. He stands. "He's dreaming of puppies. He likes puppies."

 

I get up. My tumbler wobbles as I set it on the table, beside his. "Okay," someone using my voice answers, and I take his hand. Either I'm still dreaming or I'm as crazy as Fox Mulder.

 

Heart pounding, I let him lead me to the low bed across the room. The dim bulb remains on overhead as I unfasten the fly of Mulder's jeans. His skin still smells sour and musky, of old blood and sweat, and earth and wood smoke. I kiss his bearded jaw. The scar down his sternum. The delicate skin of his earlobe and the smooth, unmarked skin of his shoulder. His hands slide over me, warm rivers certain in their course. He kisses me. My neck. My shoulders. My abdomen. I pull off the big t-shirt and lie back. He kisses lower, with his tongue inside me. Fingers inside me. He's listening; there's no room for secrets or coyness.

 

He kisses his way up my belly, my breasts, my shoulders. I smell my body on his face and still taste wine on his tongue. I am Mulder's, I think, and he is mine. I open my legs. I'm sore, and even aroused, I feel a delicious pain as he enters me.

 

I kiss his neck, rake my fingers down his back as he thrusts deep inside my body. His beard scours my face as he kisses me. My muscles tighten, and the orgasm comes: waves of mindless, primal pleasure. Don't stop, I think. Harder. I love you. Don't ever stop.

 

I feel Mulder's hot, damp skin, and hear his quick breaths. I forget any effort to be quiet. I forget each thrust stretches tender skin and sore muscles. I forget the boy, and the colonists, and the legions of people I've lost. I forget the monsters in the trees and the monsters inside us. Mulder's listening so hard, loving me so hard, I forget everything. He is the light at the end of the tunnel, and the fire that draws the moth. He is dizzying and wonderful and terrifying, and at the center of what remains of my being.

 

I don't remember losing consciousness, but my next experience is regaining it.

 

I'm on my back. In a bed. I feel the ache and afterglow of sex, but also woozy and lightheaded. I see the broad, shadowy beams across the ceiling. Mulder's scarred, bearded face looks tense. He isn't listening. He sits beside me on the bed, in boxer shorts, and presses a towel over my mouth. After a second, I realize my mouth isn't the target. I have a nosebleed.

 

I take the towel from Mulder, scoot higher on the pillows, and press firmly to stem the bleeding. I'm naked. My wet hair feels cold, and between my thighs, sticky.

 

I take his hand, and he's trembling. "I'm okay," I assure him nasally, but Mulder pulls his hand away. 

 

The fire in the stove still burns. The overhead light remains on. Across the room, the boy sleeps on the sofa. I see our empty tumblers and the half-empty wine bottle. I hear slow raindrops on the roof and the windmill creaking outside. An owl hoots.

 

Aside from a headache, I seem fine. Sore. Beard-burned and bone-weary, but I don't detect any neurological damage. "How long was I unconscious?"

                             

Mulder gets up and skulks back like a dog ashamed of biting someone. The overly-efficient movements and blank expression return. "A panther on a leash," Jeff's voice reminds me. "A brilliant, telepathic sociopath with a vague memory of loving you," Skinner's voice chimes in.

 

On the sofa, the boy shifts. Mulder radiates horror, guilt; I wonder if his son senses it. The Space Shuttle Discovery clatters to the floor.

 

"I'm okay," I repeat. "It was an accident." I lower the towel to show him. "I'm fine, Mulder."

 

Mulder's eyes stop avoiding mine and start looking through me. "Are you Scully?" Mulder whispers hoarsely. "Who are you? Where did I get you? Are you real?"

 

"I'm Scully. I'm real." Mulder doesn't move. Or seem convinced. "The night I shot Donnie Pfaster was the only night I ever spent in your bed," I tell him. "You changed the sheets, just like tonight. No matter how tightly you held me, I couldn't stop shaking. I told you I wasn't God's hand; I was a murderer. You said men are murdered, but Pfaster wasn't a man. He was a monster, and monsters lacked the right to even exist."

 

"I said monsters like Pfaster shouldn't exist." He shakes his head, partially in disagreement, and partially as if trying to wake. "The real Scully doesn't split infinitives."

 

"Mulder, you were just in bed with me. Now you're the nocturnal, post-colonization grammar police? There are 206 bones in the human body," I say, before he whips out that stiletto weapon, "but you've claimed I'm responsible for a 207th. And let me remind you about those pinkies, and the fastest way to a man's heart is the Y-incision and a pair of bone cutters."

 

"Something else," he demands. His son stirs again. "Something only she'd know."

 

I don't know. I'm so tired. Confused. Frightened. I wanted to believe Mulder had my cross necklace, but he doesn't. I wanted to believe Mulder was out there, trying to get back to me, but he wasn't. I wanted to believe Mulder isn't irreparably damaged, but he is. My forehead pounds, another drop of blood trickles from my nose, and I want to cry. "You killed Walter Skinner. Two nights ago, you shot him. You shot him and you took me from Alpha Colony."

 

Mulder blinks. He steps farther from the bed.

 

"He's dead," I tell Mulder. "Whoever you think I'm taking your son and going back to in Alpha Colony, it isn't our former boss."

 

The boy rolls over on the sofa. Mulder doesn't look back. "I killed Walter Skinner," he says shakily. He glances away. With a pained expression, he looks at me again. "I shot him. He's dead."

 

"I think you disassociated. It's common among trauma victims," I explain to the Oxford-educated psychologist and FBI profiler. "Under stress, they detach from their surroundings as a coping mech-"

 

"I wanted to touch you." His words tumble over each other. He checks his hands as if looking for blood. "Really touch you. I hear you. I see you, but I can't touch you. I didn't want to kill him. He's our friend. He protected you. I need him to protect the boy. I promised Marita. But I-"

 

Another step backward, and Mulder bumps the little table. He whirls around, ready to fight, but only two Star Wars glasses and the half-empty wine bottle are attacking him. He faces me again. I see his horror as the high tide of reality reaches him.

 

"Come here," I say, but Mulder stares at me a long time. He doesn't listen, but he watches. Unsure what else to do, I stare back.

 

The owl hoots again.

 

"What the hell happened to you, Mulder?" I ask, with no true hope of getting an answer.

 

And the answer doesn't matter. He's right. I'm not Marita; I can't hear the bad guys coming. I'm a liability. It doesn't matter that he loves me. It doesn't matter what happened to him or if I can keep him from attacking me. Lynn's men couldn't protect her. One keen observer at a trading post, or one man with a spotting scope and a sniper rifle, and Mulder's dead. I'm valuable chattel, and Mulder's son - a sliver of hope for the future - is as good as dead.

 

The boy whimpers in his sleep. Mulder still doesn't move. Not toward his son, not toward me.

 

"I'll take him back to Alpha Colony. Tomorrow," I promise. "I'll make sure he's safe and well-cared for. Surrounded by good men. That he has a puppy. Come to bed."

 

Mulder doesn't respond, nor does he come to bed. He goes to the couch. He gathers up the boy and lies down with his son on his chest and the blanket over both of them. The overhead light's still on. I remain in the big bed, naked and sore and alone. The model space shuttle remains on the floor. Outside, rain falls and the old windmill creaks and our mundane little planet rotates slowly toward morning. I hear the owl again in the distance.

 

                     ***

 

After, the monsters outnumbered the humans, so we banded together and built walls to keep the monsters out - a wise plan as yellow eyes glowed in the forest and starving rovers attacked our convoys. That meant we lived within those walls, though. Day after day, month after month: the world outside fell into ruin while we existed.

 

That was all. I existed. Survived. Remained.

 

Poured cement walls contained my world. A few hospital beds, an exam room, a 'modern' surgical bay straight out of _Marcus Welby, M.D._ a dispensary, and an ill-equipped medical lab. My bedroom was furnished with the Greenbrier Resort's expensive furniture and lavish bedding, but housed inside a cold, gray maze.

 

Though the men appreciated the female company, they didn't need my help in the storerooms or generators. I'd been voted off laundry and KP duty after my first day. Prichard didn't bat an eye at anything less than internal bleeding or a patient with female genitalia. Skinner and Moovera and the rest of the men in the bunker had thirty hours of hard work for every twenty-four-hour day. Above-ground, White Sulphur Springs had barns and greenhouses and fuel tanks and a commissary. I checked samples of well-water and any canned food that looked sketchy. I answered questions about pasteurization and fermentation, about ozone depletion and photovoltaics and weather patterns. I'd delivered a calf and done my best with some sick pigs. I'd taught the school children about cellular biology and space-time, the importance of hand-washing and scientific taxonomy. I checked on Myrtle the Turtle.

 

I didn't pull guard duty. I didn't forage or farm or trade or maintain or clean anything outside my clinic. In the end, unless someone had a heart attack, a baby, or a question about thermodynamics, my primary position was being female. No: being a liability.

 

Skinner called it "staying safe," and Mulder would have said the same. Let the men, with their superior muscle mass and lower risk for sexual violence, handle whatever needed handling.

 

I hadn't become a forensic pathologist so I could give out Band-Aids and old Tums. I hadn't joined the FBI because I wanted someone protecting me. I hadn't fallen in love with Fox Mulder because it was easy.

 

If I'd wanted protection - if I'd wanted easy - I would have loved Walter Skinner. Or Lawrence West. Houston. Or any of the bright, highly-competent, loyal, good men in Alpha Colony who would have loved me in return. I liked those men, but the dangerous, unreasonable fire I felt for Mulder: that flame never wavered.

 

It did get lonely, though. Restless. At night. In the cold, in the empty darkness, that spark sometimes craved tinder in physical rather than psychic form. If I had a baby, I'd have checked on it. If I owned a cat, I could have let it out.

 

I shrugged on my robe, found my slippers, and stepped out of my bedroom. Left the medical clinic. The bunker's power plant hummed. The emergency lights glowed in the hallway. A urinal flushed in a bathroom, and snores came in tired, overlapping waves from the dorm.

 

Skinner sat in his office. A kerosene lantern burned on his desk. A wall of shelves contained scavenged manuals and textbooks, a collection of how-to guides for surviving and rebuilding our world. Instead of Bureau memos and files and reports, a conference table held lists and maps. An RV battery, a siphon, and some coiled copper wire. A dismantled hunting rifle, three 9mm magazines, about five pounds of seed corn, and a set of walkie-talkies. Instead of a suit and tie, my old boss wore a flannel shirt over a dark green t-shirt. He sat with the fingers of one hand pressed against his forehead, and he didn't move as I entered.

                                                    

"Since you're awake, I'd like to requisition a cat," I said quietly, and closed the door to the west hall.

 

Skinner looked up, his glasses off, his thumb and forefinger still on his forehead, and his elbow on the desk. "A cat?"

 

"One small Felis catus. The color doesn't matter. Just a cat I can let out in the middle of the night."

 

In the yellow glow from the lantern, he stared at me. "A cat?"

 

"Some of the men have dogs," I reminded him, though men in the bunker didn't have dogs. That was a rule. No dogs, no prostitutes, no fighting, no smoking, and no liquor in the bunker. Letting out a cat, after lights-out, would have required opening a bunker door, which required approval from Skinner, Moovera, Houston, or Brewster. I stepped closer. "I'd like a cat."

 

Skinner studied his desk again, the surface of which held nothing. "Go back to bed, Scully," he ordered irritably.

 

Instead, I walked around and leaned against the edge of his desk, beside where he sat. Still not looking at me. Hand still against his forehead. Glasses still off. An empty tumbler sat on his desk beside a half-empty bottle of whiskey. The tendons of his neck stood out. Perspiration dampened the throat of his t-shirt.

 

"How long has Mulder been listening?"

 

"I don't know," Skinner told his desk, and I sensed he really didn't. "A half-hour, maybe. But I'm, I-" He winced. "I don't want him listening. Get him out of my head, Scully."

 

"Are you thinking a 'Clinton and Lewinsky' here, or are you coming back to my room?"

 

Skinner looked up, and for the first and only time, said, "Go to Hell."

 

I swallowed dryly. If I believed in auras, his would have been the color of a bad bruise.

 

"Tell him," he ordered through his teeth. "This time, I'm not doing it."

 

"No means no, Mulder," I said to our unseen audience. "You can listen to me, but Skinner doesn't want any part of this."

                                       

I waited for Mulder's presence in my head but it didn't come. Mulder hadn't listened to me in weeks.

 

I reached to touch Skinner, but he stood, sending his chair rolling backward to thump into the wall. "Don't." I noticed a bulge in his jeans. "I don't want him listening. I never agreed to do this for Fox Mulder. I agreed to do it for you, Dana. This can't be what you want."

 

"For me? You agreed in order to indulge a fantasy of cheating on your wife with a younger female agent you supervised," I said. "So the words 'Mulder's listening' became your golden ticket."

 

I don't know why I'd said it. It was petty and cruel and entirely untrue. Skinner's objection to Mulder listening wasn't new, only increasingly emphatic. Nor had I ever suspected Skinner lied. The dozens of times he shared my bed, at my invitation, without Mulder's psychic presence, slipped my mind. I resented Skinner denying me access to Mulder. I resented being locked in that bunker, in that colony, with hundreds of men claiming it was for my own good. No matter how long I waited, Mulder didn't return. I resented that if I couldn't sleep at night, the one living thing I could check on was a former boss still in love with his dead wife.

 

Skinner grabbed my wrist - I think to escort me out - but stopped as two crimson streams flowed from his nose. He touched his upper lip and looked at the blood on his fingers.

 

He released my wrist. Stepped back.

 

The bleeding didn't slow.

 

"Scully-"

 

"Mulder, stop." Mulder could cloud my thoughts and make my head ache, but never anything like this. "He isn't going to hurt me. You're hurting him."

 

Blood trickled from Skinner's ear.

 

"Mulder, he said 'no.' Why are you doing this?"

 

I'd inventoried the medication in the clinic earlier that week. I could drop Skinner's blood pressure before he stroked out. I could sedate him until Mulder stopped. I couldn't do it instantly, though. If Mulder didn't stop, or if medication didn't stop the pressure- I couldn't treat what I didn't even understand.

 

I started untying the fabric belt on my robe, making a knot with my shaking fingers.

 

"No." Skinner wiped his bloody nose with his shirt sleeve. "I don't want him listening to me with you."

 

"Pick another man, Mulder," I ordered. I looked around the dark, empty office like a convenient adult male might lurk in the shadows. "Captain Houston. Or the CIA guy from-" 

 

Skinner repeated hoarsely, "No. No, Dana."

 

"I don't care."

 

"I do," he informed me.

 

"In that case, as a medical doctor, I'm advising you to take off your pants."

 

He groaned, part in fury, part in pain. "Shit." He nodded.

 

I got my robe untied; Skinner had it off instantly. Two buttons popped off my pajama top as he jerked it open. "Too many Goddamn clothes, Agent Scully," he said, stripping the rest of mine: long johns, t-shirt, slippers, socks. "For a beautiful woman, you wear too many Goddamn clothes."

 

"Your bunker's too Goddamn cold," I told him.

 

From behind, he touched me in the typical places, squeezing my breasts, running a hand between my legs in a manner suggesting he'd purchased a woman to salvage a miserable day. It felt impersonal, angry, and I didn't blame him.

 

"I'm gonna kill him." Skinner bent me hastily over his desk. "Your former partner: if I ever get my hands on that bastard, I'm gonna kill him."

 

Chill bumps rose on my skin. His zipper opened. The cold from the cement floor pressed into my bare feet, and Skinner's erection pressed against my sex. What followed wasn't a series of lubricated, slowly deepening thrusts, but one hard, insistent one. I gasped and grabbed at the desk. I swear he pushed a 250 ml Griffin beaker into my vagina.

 

Breathe. Relax, I ordered my body.

 

Skinner's hips pulled back and thrust forward again, deeper. The smooth desk felt slippery beneath my palms and cold against my stomach.

 

Far too soon, he was all the way inside me, creating an ache up to my abdomen. I heard him gasp with each stroke. "You like it, Scully? Like this?" he asked, panting. "This what you came looking for tonight?"

 

His boot nudged the inside of my foot, wanting my legs open wider. "He likes it," Skinner assured me, referencing his psychic eavesdropper. He ran his hand down my hip and to my buttocks. "Pretty Agent Scully, bent over my desk. Me and my golden ticket." His other hand went to the back of my head, guiding me down so my cheek and bare breasts pressed against the wood. "If we're both whores, let's give Mulder his money's worth, Pretty Agent Scully."

 

I squeezed my eyes closed.

 

He withdrew, and I knew what was coming. His open hand came down on my ass, delivering a smart spank. Again. Again, as I bent over the desk like a schoolgirl in the principal's office. Again, each time making me jump and cry out. Again, until my backside felt afire and the wetness between my legs became humiliating.

 

He pushed two fingers deep inside me and slid them up, slowly, to my anus. He rubbed and pressed against the tight ring of muscles as I gasped. "Does Mulder know what your professor liked, Pretty Agent Scully? Your married med school professor? What you used to let him do?"

 

"No," I admitted, though Walter Skinner did. Cancerman's file, I remembered.

 

His hand spanked my ass again, hard.

 

I amended, "No, sir."

 

The slick fingers returned to my anus. One, then two fingers pressed inside. Slid slowly forward and back, not even an inch, but enough the muscles burned as they stretched. "You used to like it."

 

"Oh my God. Sir- Oh God." I panted, but I didn't resist.  

 

"Do you like that? Do you want it like that tonight?" he asked, barely sounding like himself. Sounding aloof, nonplussed.

 

Face hot, legs trembling, I answered the second question. "No," and added quickly, "No, sir."

 

The fingers stopped. Withdrew. Trailed up and down the hot, stinging skin of my ass. "Do you want to suck me off?" He moved back. "Do you want to get on your knees to get Mulder out of my head?"

 

"No, sir."

 

"Why not?" he asked coldly.

 

I bit my lip and didn't answer.

 

He stepped forward again, and put his hands on hips. "You know why not," he said. "You know why you came looking for me tonight, and what you want: the little part of you that remembers the ship in Africa and thinks there's still a chance." The head of his hard penis pressed against me, and my whole body shivered. "Tell me what you want. Say it," he ordered. "Pretty. Agent. Scully."

 

With my eyes squeezed shut and my hands sweaty against the desk, I said, "Do it. Fuck me. Sir."

 

He held my hip with one hand and put the other on the back of my head, holding my hair and keeping me down. Entered me with one thrust and a satisfied sigh. With my body slick and more accommodating, the thrusts came faster. Harder. Wordless and primal. Of course it happened: the indignity, the submission, being punished for being bad. My thighs quivered, my muscles tensed, and I came. Hard and loud, with my former boss grunting and thrusting behind me.

 

I don't know how long the act lasted after that. Not long. I remember his hand moving to my shoulder, gripping hard. I remember feeling the heat from the kerosene lantern on Skinner's desk and hearing the soft hiss of the burning wick next to my face.

 

I didn't feel Mulder's presence, but I would. Sooner or later, that odd pressure would return, and he'd hear everything.

 

Skinner finished and withdrew. My vagina throbbed. The sphincter muscles of my anus still burned. Every place he'd spanked stung. Where he'd held my hip and shoulder, I bet I'd have bruises. And my body hummed. I sniffed because I was cold, not because of the odd urge to cry.

 

I heard him exhale and step back. Zip up his pants. And a long, dangerous silence.

 

I stood up and turned around.

 

My old boss stared at me, stunned. Like a killer surprised to find a bloody knife in his hand. He looked at me numbly and, face red, he looked away. "How the hell can Mulder think that's love?" he demanded. "For that matter, how can you, Dana?"

 

He didn't hand me my clothes. He didn't apologize for being coarse or rough or ask if I was okay. Skinner wiped the last of the blood from his upper lip with a shirt sleeve covered with dark red smears. He still wouldn't look at me. I stepped toward him, but he stepped back.

 

I picked up my robe, shoved my arms into the sleeves, and wrapped it around me. The thick fabric might as well have been sheer. I didn't see my pajamas or slippers, and Skinner didn't offer the lantern or to help me look.

 

"What's wrong with you, Scully? Why does love always have to hurt for you to like it?"

 

I didn't answer because I didn't know. Semen crept down the insides of my thighs, my whole ass burned, and the cement floor chilled my feet until they ached.

 

"Mulder's stopped listening. We're done. You and me and Mulder listening: it's done. Next time, he can kill me."

 

"I won't let him do that."

 

I don't think Skinner heard me. Without his glasses, he squinted in the lamplight. "My golden ticket?" he repeated. "How dare you?"

 

"I'm sorry."

 

He took a deep breath and crossed his arms. He shook his head as if puzzled. "You think I'd throw away my wife for you?"

 

I said quickly, "No."

 

The word barely left my mouth before I'm informed coolly, "You're right. If I was still at work at two AM, or alone in a hotel room in Idaho, you were a fantasy. I bet you're a lot of men's fantasies." Twin vertical, contemptuous lines still punctuated his brows. He sounded as if he wanted to clear up this misunderstanding. "You're a very pretty, very bright little masochist who slept her way through college and med school and Quantico. But she's my wife. How dare you?"

 

He was angry, I told myself. He had every right to be angry. Still, my chin quivered.

 

"We're done. Go to bed," Skinner ordered, and I did.

 

I spent the rest of that long late-April night sore and alone. I checked Byers' map and sat down carefully to eat breakfast with Moovera. Skinner got a bowl of oatmeal to-go, and he ate dinner somewhere outside the bunker.

 

I rigged a potent combination of diazepam and blood pressure medication in a rudimentary Epi-pen. Portable, shelf-stable, and auto-injecting. If need be, Skinner could render himself unconscious for hours.

 

Three days later, I woke to find hot coffee awaiting me in the clinic once again.

 

The ground thawed, seeds sprouted, and more animals gave birth. Houston went out with his traders, and Brewster's foragers came and went. I made a house call to check on Amy and her baby. Byers updated his map. The men started building a hydroelectric plant on the river, and they talked about a solar grid. Walter Skinner ran Alpha Colony, and if he didn't require medical treatment, he didn't interact with me.

 

Eight days later, Skinner stopped by with a spider bite I deemed swollen and painful, but not life-threatening. He agreed to stay in the clinic a few hours for observation and to sleep off the Benadryl. He didn't sleep, of course, but I brought him a blanket, and he thanked me. I showed him the jerry-rigged Epi-pen, and Skinner said he used a morphine auto-injector in Vietnam, though not as the Marines intended.

 

Eleven days later, after breakfast, I looked up from my microscope to find Skinner in my lab. "Come with me," he requested. "Bring a jacket. There's something you need to see."

 

He had his hands on his hips in a manner suggesting me asking 'What?' would have been futile.

 

Skinner kept the stereo off and the heater on as he drove to the western gate. I saw the crowd from a distance. The men parted, and Skinner drove to the closed gate.

 

"Don't get out," he instructed, and shifted the transmission to park.

 

The morning sun pulled wisps of moisture from the asphalt, and mist clung to the mountaintops. A black Lariat rental sedan parked on the road two hundred yards outside the second gate. The ragged inhabitants of Purgatory gathered to gawk at a body tied across the car's hood the way a hunter might bring home a dead deer.

 

"He's not Mulder," Skinner said before I could ask, and answered my second question. "He's not one of ours."

 

Skinner passed me a pair of binoculars. The cool spring probably inhibited decomposition, but the man had been dead for days. A week, maybe, with exposure to the elements. I saw no gunshot or stab wound. I did see signs he'd been alive when tied to the hood. I adjusted the binoculars. CGB Spender's face came into focus. "Oh my God."

 

"The guards heard a car engine during the night, but didn't spot him until sunrise," Skinner told me.

 

I focused on the Smoking Man's bloated, dead face again.

 

"Has Mulder listened to you in the past two weeks?" Skinner asked.

 

I nodded. "You think Mulder did this? Mulder was here?"

 

"I think that's a hunting trophy, and you told me CGB Spender had Mulder's brain tissue implanted in his head." I lowered the binoculars. The muscles of Skinner's throat convulsed. "Do you think it was ever Mulder listening to me or has it been Cancerman all along?"

 

"I know it's Mulder listening to me," I answered. "If CGB Spender had been listening to you all along, I think we'd have found Spender's body outside the gate four years ago."

 

"But you believed Mulder would do that." Skinner sounded like my angry boss rather than my friend. "Coerce me, want me to hurt you, to humiliate you. You allowed it. I don't know where to begin apologizing, but- Hell, I think you liked it." He exhaled, closed his eyes, and turned his face away. "My God, I just said that. Dana, I'm sorry."

 

In response, I blurted, "I want to search the car."

 

He looked at me again, with an angry wrinkle between his brows. "For what? Trace evidence? A love note? The body on the hood: there's your partner's crazy love note."

 

For a bag of sunflower seeds, a gnawed pencil. For a forgotten jacket, even. I wanted to know if the upholstery smelled like Mulder's skin.

 

"I read your report," he said. "Years ago, about the spaceship in Africa. The inscriptions, the seawater boiling, the fish returning to life. What did Cancerman mean about you remembering that ship? Think there's a chance? A chance of what? Why did I say that?"

 

"Mulder brought that pregnant woman to Alpha Colony, too." Skinner and I had different conversations in the same vehicle. "The baby's blood type didn't match Mulder's."

 

Skinner stared at me. "I had my men incinerate those bodies."

 

"You didn't have them incinerate my medical instruments or my lab."

 

In the distance, a rough-looking man opened the rental car's door and began riffling through it. Another man untied the rope. Spender's corpse rolled down the hood and sprawled on the pavement.

 

"If Mulder wasn't that baby's father, your conjecture he brought the mother here is based solely on a man's wristwatch available at any corner jeweler," Skinner reminded me.

 

"He was here."

 

Without another word and without touching me, Skinner put the SUV in reverse and backed away from the gate. Turned around. On the way back to the bunker, we passed men readying tractors to plow. I saw newborn calves with their mothers. I saw the little school. Houses with windmills and wells and greenhouses. Houston and a convoy of empty tanker trucks headed for Ashland, and a pick-up truck loaded with solar panels drove past us. Lawrence North supervised a crew cutting tree branches away from power lines on the theory we'd use those lines in the future. Amy and her baby and Lawrence's dog Cynthia sat in Lawrence's truck. Amy wore a blue velour zip-up jacket, and a matching pink and blue headband.

 

I rolled down my window, letting the cold morning air wash over my face and blow my hair. Skinner turned the heater up but didn't insist I close the window.

 

Men waved. Men walking or riding to their jobs raised their hands to Skinner and me. "Morning, sir. Morning, doc." I heard it a dozen times between the outer gate and the bunker. I recognized the men. They weren't Mulder, but they were familiar faces who spent hours hunting or fishing or farming or foraging to obtain the food I ate. They built our walls and spent hours on guard duty making sure the monsters stayed outside the fences.

 

Skinner turned toward the remains of the Greenbrier Resort as I started sniffing. The tears started in earnest, and he pulled off the road and stopped. He rolled up my window and let the engine idle so I stayed warm.

 

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have realized it wasn't Mulder listening. I was angry and drunk and I behaved-"

 

"He was here," I told Skinner angrily. "Mulder was here."

 

"My guards didn't spot Mulder. No one in Purgatory spotted Mulder. No one's ever spotted Mulder near Alpha Colony. I think Mulder killed Spender, but-"

 

I shook my head.

 

"Dana-" He reached for my hand. I jerked away.

 

"Don't."

 

Skinner exhaled. "I'm sorry," he repeated. It seemed a blanket apology: for that night, for Mulder's absence, for not knowing the difference between Mulder and a monster in his head. "I'll take you back to the gate. Stay in the vehicle, and you can sit there and watch."

 

"Mulder's not there now," I snapped, and even I knew I sounded like a crazy woman.

 

He didn't try to touch me again. He leaned his head back against the seat, looking defeated. He waited while I sniffed, so I didn't have to get out of his SUV in front of everyone looking like a crybaby.

 

"Dana, do you really want a cat?" Skinner asked as I dried up.

 

"I don't even like cats," I confessed, and got out, still a quarter-mile from the bunker's closest entrance.

 

                     ***

 

In April 1997, a rocket carried the cremated remains of two dozen people into space, which sounded nice. People died in Algerian guerilla massacres and a Hunan train crash, in fires in a pilgrim camp on the way to Mecca, and in a murderous spree in Minnesota.

 

I'd die in a hospital bed, gaunt, pin-cushioned with IV needles and wearing a scratchy hospital gown and a diaper. Machines would beep, and janitors would mop the hall outside my room. Nurses would close the door, giving the family privacy. Bill would bring Tara; God alone knows why - I didn't like Tara. Charlie would bring my nephews to say goodbye, though I'd slipped from consciousness. My mother would sit in an uncomfortable wooden chair and cry.

 

Mulder had knocked twice, waited, and knocked again. Waited. His key turned in the lock on my apartment door. "Scully? Did you oversleep?"

 

I put an arm across my bare breasts.

 

"Are you okay?" Mulder's quick footsteps crossed my living room, checked the kitchen, and approached in the hallway. "Scully? Where are you? I got an e-mail from a Detective Roy Thomas. A female postal worker in Virginia died under-"

 

The footsteps stopped in my bedroom doorway. My vision blurred, but Mulder was likely shaved and caffeinated and morning-fresh in his suit. Ready to save the world. He held keys; I heard jingling as he fiddled with them. I sat on the floor in pantyhose and a half-slip, with no makeup and my hair still wet. If the bed hadn't propped me up, I couldn't have sat up.

 

The jingling stopped. "Are you okay?" he asked as if he hoped desperately I'd say "I'm fine, Mulder. I'm half-naked and sitting here for the view."

 

"I can't get up," I confessed. "I got dizzy."

 

A dozen pill bottles sat on my dresser, and a pile of worn suits covered a chair. I hadn't taken the suits to the cleaners because they didn't fit anymore. The laundry hamper overflowed. In the kitchen, piles of bills littered the counter. The fruit bowl held black bananas and gnats. Finding the energy to write a check or buy groceries didn't seem vital since eating gave me dry heaves and I wouldn't need electricity in a few months. If Mulder looked in the bathroom sink, he'd find it spattered with blood.

 

He stood in the doorway while I sat miserably. Humiliated. Too weak and dizzy to even reach for a blanket. I'd picked out a suit and blouse. I'd gotten high heels from the closet. My weapon and FBI badge lay on the dresser. I had my costume ready to fool everyone for one more day, but I couldn't get up.

 

I heard Mulder inhale.

 

"I'm sorry," I told him. "I got dizzy. You've been waiting downstairs, haven't you?"

 

My bedside phone rang moments earlier, and my cellular phone. Neither was within arm's reach, so they'd remained unanswered.

 

Mulder pulled the comforter off the bed and covered me. "Do I need to call an ambulance?"

 

I shook my head. The world swayed nauseatingly. Despite the bed's support, I started to slide sideways to the floor.

 

Mulder put an arm under my knees and another behind my shoulders. He picked me up and put me on the bed. The comforter, dotted with bloodstains from nocturnal nosebleeds, remained on the floor.

 

"I'll die flat-chested," I said miserably. The brain tumor, the futility of chemotherapy, even planning my own funeral: that moment, as a medical doctor and an FBI agent and an independent, professional woman, I hated being skinny. I spent years envying Missy's bust-line, and now my bras were loose. "That might be the worst of it."

 

Mulder pulled a sheet over me and retrieved the comforter. "I'm pretty sure that's not the worst of it. Also, you have a lovely rack. And a great ass," he added. "There are 206 bones in the human body; consider yourself responsible for a 207th. I'm reporting on behalf of all heterosexual males and female UPS drivers, not as your partner."

 

"Thanks," I mumbled, and closed my eyes.

 

Three seconds later, Mulder said sharply, "Scully."

 

I inhaled and opened my eyes. "I'm not dying this second, Mulder, and barking at me if I was wouldn't do you any good."

 

"I- I- I don't want my last words to you to include 'ass,' 'rack,' and 'bone.'" He put a stack of pillows behind me. His hand shook as he smoothed my wet hair back from my forehead. My vision cleared, and I didn't need a mirror. The horror on his face told me how I looked. Pale. Skeletal. I looked like I was dying - because I was. "Jesus, Scully."

 

The soft pillow and the bed felt nice. Warm.

 

"What do I do?" Mulder asked. "Call your doctor? Call your mother?"

 

"Oh my God, no. Don't let my mother see this mess." I meant the piles of laundry and the empty kitchen, not the mess that was me. "I need to rest. Get some fluids to stay down."

 

"Something to drink?"

 

I agreed since he'd jumped up to get it.

 

I heard a kitchen cabinet open. Two more cabinets, and my dishwasher. Those dishes were dirty and had been dirty for a week. Water ran in the sink as Mulder hand-washed a glass. The dishwasher switched on.

 

Mulder returned with the water and told me, "There's no Gatorade, no juice. When was the last time you went to the grocery store? I wanted to make you toast, but your bread is blue."

 

His jaw had a displeased set as he sat on the edge of my bed. If I didn't drink the water of my own volition, I think he planned to hold my nose and pour it down my throat.

 

I took two small sips and set the glass aside. The room didn't rock as I moved. I found Mulder's hand, warm and comforting. "Tell me about your case. Under what circumstances did the postal worker die?"

 

"My case? She-she- Some bizarre, indoor bee attack, but my files, my e-mails from the detective are missing. The victim's body and bloodwork are missing. Skinner's being his usual stick-up-his-ass, unhelpful self, and somebody's covering something, but I'm not sure- I- Scully-" Mulder's hand tightened and his voice cracked. "You said you'd fight. You said you'd beat this."

 

"I go to chemo. I see my doctor."

 

"You don't eat," he countered. "I watch you not eat lunch every day."

 

"If I eat, I vomit-"

 

"Have your doctor put you in the hospital and stick a tube down your throat," Mulder said. "An IV in your hand. Something. Keep fighting. Don't give up. I need more time."

 

I felt impossibly tired, more tired than Mulder could ever grasp. The tiredness overshadowed the fear and anger, even. "I don't want to die, Mulder. I want to have babies and grow old and- You've got me watching _La Femme Nikita_ -"

 

"Done," he promised. "Live for babies and _La Femme Nikita_. And me. If you die, there'd be a black hole inside me. I'd be a star going supernova, without you as the gravity keeping me in check."

 

I looked up at him wearily. "That's scientifically impossible. You can't be both a black hole and a star going supernova."

 

Mulder offered the glass of water again. "If you don't beat this cancer, I'm going to run around spouting scientific illiteracy and tell everyone the late Dr. Dana Scully taught me everything I know."

 

"I will haunt you, Mulder," I threatened.

 

"Dana Scully, are you expressing belief in contact with the afterlife?"

 

The familiarity of him enveloped me. Fox Mulder, the invariant believer, tilting at windmills and trying to save the world one mutant and sociopath at a time. Appreciating my bust-line and full of sarcastic one-liners covering an ocean of sadness and loneliness. Mulder, who searched for something 'out there' after losing so many people he loved on this planet. I'd be one more funeral. My brilliant, precious, infuriating Mulder - I'd leave him. Even if I fought as hard as I could, I had a matter of months. The clock inside me began to wind down. I felt each tick coming slower.

 

I opened my mouth, but instead of some smart response, my chin quivered. "I don't want to die, Mulder. I don't want to leave you."

 

He set the glass aside, leaned down, and kissed my forehead. His lips felt soft. He smelled of starch and coffee. He put a hand on my jaw and kissed my cheek. "Don't leave me. Fight. I know you're tired but buy me a little more time. Please."

 

I nodded. I'd try.

 

"You're gonna live so you can have a baby someday. You're gonna be a great fact-spewing, second-guessing, kick-ass mom. You're gonna live to see the rest of this season of _La Femme Nikita_ , and so your mother doesn't have to bury another daughter. Because there's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, and you have two of them." He stroked my wet hair and, so lightly and quickly he could have denied doing it, for the first time, kissed my lips. "You're gonna live because I'm a selfish bastard and I need you to live, Scully."

 

"Okay," I managed.

 

After the sips of water stayed down, Mulder brought me a bra, a sweater, a skirt, and a pair of shoes. As I dressed at a snail's pace, he put my laundry in the washing machine and gathered my dry cleaning. He threw away my old food and took out the trash. Changed the sheets on my bed. He wiped down the bathroom and the kitchen. I assume he paid my bills; they vanished from the counter. Mulder, smooth liar he could be, called my mother and said he was taking me to the hospital for some tests. Could Mom freshen up my apartment and bring over some groceries so I could rest when he brought me home?

 

For my mother, that was a call to battle. Two days later, I came home to a spotless apartment and a refrigerator full of soup and cut-up fruit. She had fresh flowers in a vase and fresh towels in the bathroom. That Saturday, Mom put me in her Honda and hauled me to Macy's, where we bought a pale green, blood-free comforter with a matching dust ruffle. At the register, I grabbed three matching decorative pillows because I liked them, and on the off chance I lived to use them.

 

I survived to see sweater season and a B cup again, and Mulder thanked me. Not on his own behalf, but on behalf of all heterosexual males and female UPS drivers.

 

                     ***

 

Like Skinner's old office in the Hoover Building, his quarter of the executive suite was sparse, functional, and masculine. The cardboard box of _Delta Force_ books dwindled. An empty tumbler remained on the nightstand, and he'd made his bed with military precision. I saw the guitar case beneath the bed. A pair of boxing gloves decorated a bedpost, and his coat hung on another. As I passed, I noticed the minky, masculine scent I associated with him. My coffee appeared in the clinic before I woke. Skinner had passed through the dining hall that morning, walking quickly and discussing something with Moovera. Both men had nodded 'good-morning' and continued on their way.

 

Opposite his bed, Moovera had a beautiful Hindu altar in his corner of the dorm. His bed was made as precisely as Skinner's, and the fringe on a dark red rug laid perfectly. Being Moo, he'd labeled his dresser drawers. Most held clothing, but one red label read 'ammunition: 22mm, 45mm, 9MM, 308, 5.56NATO.' Another held knives: 'hunting, carving, paring, rampuri, skinning, cleaver.'

 

Brewster, the third occupant, kept clothes and weapons in his corner of the dorm, but seldom slept there. Brewster spent most of his time leading the foragers, venturing farther and farther into Hell. Between missions though, Brewster vanished for days. He said he hunted, but Skinner had told me Brewster still went home, to the old cabin high in the mountains where he'd lived with his family. I believed Skinner.

 

Captain Houston's quarters also looked as if he merely passed through rather than lived there. He'd added warmer blankets to his bed, but I saw no books, no CD's, no guitar, and no pinups. No radio-controlled helicopter, no telescope, no golf clubs, no dart set. Houston and his men traded with Norfolk Inland, New Richmond, Providence Colony, Ashland and God knows where else. Even edging into the Badlands, until those colonies grew too lawless. The men of Alpha Colony loved their toys. Houston could have brought back anything he wanted, but only his rifle lay on the dresser. His camouflage jacket hung on the end of the bed, and a sweatshirt, a pair of fatigue pants, and his boots lay on the floor. A military pack stood ready in a chair, along with canteens and a sleeping bag, a knife, a pistol, maps, and binoculars. Captain Houston and his men should have left for Richmond an hour ago. On Houston's nightstand, against the lamp, he'd propped up one photograph: the woman in the WVU shirt and the girl with bright green eyes.

 

A slight fever made Captain Houston's own green eyes sparkle as he looked up at me from his bed. Perspiration beaded on his tan forehead and dampened the collar of his t-shirt. I'd prepared for typhoid or cholera or one of the numerous deadly contagions that could spread like wildfire among men living in close quarters. Poor Houston personified 'miserable,' but his misery involved only a sore throat, chills, body aches, fatigue...

 

I put my stethoscope and digital thermometer back in my medical bag. I dismissed the guards Skinner sent in case Houston's illness turned out to be Purity.

 

"The flu?" Houston said, seeming disappointed. He coughed twice before resuming shivering. "I'm gonna die of the flu? That won't impress the ladies."

      

"I'm a lady, and I'm impressed you managed to catch influenza, After," I said from behind my mask. "I won't let you die." I turned to Prichard, also masked and gloved. "He'll need Tamiflu and acetaminophen. Some cough syrup with codeine. Tell the kitchen to send lots of fluids but leave them in the hallway. Have Moovera make a sign and tell the guards; this dorm's quarantined until I say otherwise. I don't want a hundred more cases next week."

 

Prichard nodded but didn't move. I knew he had orders from Skinner, but I doubted Houston would spring from his sickbed and wrestle off my clothing.

 

"Now," I prompted.

 

As Prichard left, Houston coughed and looked up at me wretchedly. "This isn't even the good kind of sick, with cable TV and soup and sympathy."

 

"I'll ask the chef about soup." I picked up his sweatshirt from the floor. "Do you want this?"

 

"The pretty lady doctor's offerin' to put my clothes back on?"

 

I turned the shirt right-side-out. "Is it everything you'd imagined?"

 

"Oh, that and more." With a humiliated sigh, Houston pushed up on his elbows and sat up. I guided his arms into the sleeves and helped ease the fabric over his head. He moved like an old dog as he laid back down. "Thank you." In afterthought, he added, "It's so cold in here."

 

I pulled his blankets higher. "I've complained, for all the good it did me."

 

"I'd think he'd listen to you." He sniffed and shifted his head against the wrinkled pillow. "Maybe Director Skinner don't realize what a good thing he has?"

 

I sat on the edge of his bed and gestured to the photograph on the nightstand. "Were these your good things?"

 

"My Frog Hog and the Sprog?" He touched his lips before touching the photograph twice with his fingertips, the woman's face, and the girl's. The gesture reminded me of a gambler touching something for luck. I bet the picture accompanied him on every mission, Before and After, and he'd repeated the ritual a thousand times. "They were my best things. You have kids Before, Dr. Scully?"

 

Houston asked earnestly, so I answered honestly. "One, for a little while."

 

"No more?"

 

"We tried. I miscarried, and-" I shook my head 'no.' "No more."

 

Another shiver. Another cough. "No more ever?"

 

I shook my head again.

 

"Jackie had a miscarriage," he said, and I assumed he meant his late wife. "I was overseas, so I didn't know for a while. But she was okay." Houston gestured vaguely to the bedroom kitty-corner from his, beyond the tall grey partitions. "You and Director Skinner?"

 

I wasn't psychic; seconds passed while I puzzled out what he meant. "No. Walter Skinner was married. He was my boss."

 

"Your boss in the FBI?"

 

I nodded. Houston might sleep fifty feet away and eat in the same dining hall, but Skinner discussed his private life as much in Alpha Colony as he had in the Bureau.

 

"You still followin' the boss's orders, Dr. Scully?"

 

Everyone in Alpha Colony followed Walter Skinner's orders. If not, they could leave. I admitted, "I don't understand."

 

Houston sniffed. "Last month, I couldn't sleep. I got up. Noticed a light in his office. I heard you, Dr. Scully. With Director Skinner." His green eyes focused on me. "If you want to play that rough, it's your business. If you don't, though... I know my way around outside our fences, and there's nothing holdin' me here. Not now. There are things he doesn't tell you. Say the word, pretty lady doctor." His Texas drawl faded to barely noticeable. "I'll take you anywhere you want, Dana, and keep you safe. No strings attached."

 

He looked at me, and I looked at the blankets. "Captain Houston-"

 

"Steve."

 

"Steve-" I echoed.

 

"Captain Steven Redmond. US Naval SEAL. Fond of strawberry margaritas and long walks on scorching Iraqi beaches in full combat gear. Still hoping to find J.K Rowling alive After so, once I get to Heaven, I can tell the Sprog whether Hermione and Harry Potter got together. I was a friend of Baby Brother Charlie, and I'm at your service. Just, at the moment, so sick I'd have to get better to die."

 

"Captain Houston-"

 

"Steve," he prompted.

 

"Steve-"

 

"You got it. Once more. I'm like Beetlejuice; say my name three times, and I'll come."

 

The ease of him, the banter, even the protectiveness wrapped in sexual innuendo: I knew this dance. And I missed it so much. From behind my mask, I responded, "Jackie must have loved that."

 

He managed a smirk. "How do you think we got the Sprog?"

 

I took his hand. The warmth of his skin reached mine, though a latex barrier separated our fingers. Houston still wore a wedding band. "Walter Skinner is a good man, Steve, and a good leader, and an old friend. I think you misunderstood whatever you overheard."

 

"No, I don't think so." Houston's hand stayed in mine but he shifted his feet beneath the layers of blankets. "I grew up outside Galveston. I got nicknamed 'Houston' because the SEALs called me when they had a problem. Because I'd fix it. I don't like seeing a woman mistreated, especially Charlie's Big Sister Dana."

 

Before I instigated a shootout in the executive suite, I said firmly, "I don't need you to fix anything."

 

"I been shot," he said, lapsing back into a slow, country-boy drawl. "I been bit by a scorpion, a water cobra, and my kid sister." Without breaking eye contact, and in a smooth, efficient movement, Houston's hand slid from mine to his abdomen. "I had a Somali kid come at me with a bayonet and a female suicide bomber try to blow me up in Lebanon. I helped take out politicians and generals on three continents. I survived two weeks alone in a desert, my kid's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, and an alien apocalypse. Now I'm gonna die of the flu in this freezin' gray hole."

 

Whatever prompted the abrupt change, I said, "You're not dying," since that seemed an appropriate response.

 

"Listen to her, Houston," Skinner's voice encouraged. I looked behind me. Skinner stood with Prichard in the space between two partitions. Skinner held a mask over his mouth and nose, and Prichard held the medication I requested. "Dr. Scully's forbid my death on several occasions."

 

I gestured for Skinner to keep back, and I adjusted the blankets over my patient one last time. Captain Houston's right hand returned to his belly. He folded his thumb and pinkie down so three fingers remained up.

 

Prichard took over, doling out pills as I picked up my medical bag and went to Skinner.

 

"He has influenza?" Skinner asked, as we stepped between the partitions and into his quarters. "The Spanish flu, swine flu? What are we looking at, Scully?"

 

I shook my head. "I won't know until I get my specimens under a microscope. On average, influenza incubates two days and patients display symptoms about a week after exposure. Steve's the only person sick. That makes me think he was exposed last week, in Ashland." I peeled off my latex gloves. "We need to quarantine him and monitor everyone else, especially children and pregnant women. We have Tamiflu; it's old but it should be effective. Have your men steer clear of Ashland for a while."

 

"I'll make an announcement. I'll have anyone showing symptoms reports to the clinic. Are you feeling okay?" He reached to touch my face.

 

I shied back. "Don't touch me."

 

"I'm sorry." His shoulders developed a remorseful slouch.

 

"He- he- Captain Houston was coughing all over me. The influenza virus survives hours outside the body. You'll contaminate yourself."

 

Skinner nodded and studied his work boots.

 

Too many seconds passed for a discussion of flu prevention.

 

"Assign men to wipe down the bunker's light switches, doorknobs, the tables and rec area," I requested. "You and Moovera and Brewster find somewhere else to bunk for a few days, and this dorm needs decontaminated. Bedding washed, walls and floors cleaned. Prichard will take care of Captain Houston. I'll check out anyone who comes into the clinic. If there are any more cases, I'll let you know."

 

My former boss, usually fairly articulate, nodded again. He said quietly, "Send Prichard back to the clinic. You stay. With Steve." Skinner still didn't look at me. "He's a good man, Dana."

 

"You're all good men." I held up my bag. "I'm the medical doctor. I have to check my samples."

 

I got a final nod before Skinner said brusquely, "Keep me posted, Dr. Scully," and walked away.

 

                     ***

 

This nameless little creature is unquestionably Fox Mulder's progeny. I wake to the boy on the bed, beside me. Not curled up like he does with Mulder but sitting Indian-style as if it's story time. He holds his toy space shuttle and silently stares at my bare breasts.

 

The boy's breath smells of bubblegum toothpaste. He's clean. He wears a long-sleeve t-shirt, purple Barney underwear, socks, and no pants. I smell coffee. The bulb on the ceiling is dark, but an oil lamp hangs from a hook, casting a yellow glow into the shadows. I see a washtub near the kitchen sink. A purple Barney towel and the miniature missing pants lay on the floor. My clothes and the boy's outfit from yesterday hang to dry on a rack. A fire pops in the woodstove. The wine bottle's gone, and the two Star Wars tumblers rest upside down in the dish drain on the counter. Bleary-eyed, I wonder if it was a one-shot deal: the dirty boy, the dirty clothing, and the dirty dishes, all washed in one tub of warm water. If so, I'm curious about Mulder's order of operations.

 

I ease the covers up and over my breasts.

 

Mulder's blanket is folded on the sofa. My face and the insides of my thighs feel scoured, I ache everywhere, and I smell bad again.

 

A coffee mug sits on the nightstand with a saucer overtop. Despite last night, the fantasy tumbles through my mind again: being a family, staying here for the winter. Giving Mulder a chance to heal. Regardless of what Mulder wants, he's first and foremost my friend. I understand what's at stake and what I promised, but I can't reconcile love and loyalty with abandonment.

 

"There's coffee, Scully." The boy sounds like he's relaying a message. "Don't say I- Mulder," he corrects. "Don't say Mulder never did anything for you."

 

I feel the child inside my head, a little sunbeam skipping around.

 

A battery-operated clock beside the bed reads half past six. Mulder isn't in the dim apartment. He must be outside or downstairs in the stable, but I don't hear him. I hear a windmill creaking and the wood in the stove burning. I pick up the mug. It's tepid, not hot. If Mulder poured fresh coffee into the ceramic cup and covered it, assuming the ambient temperature of this room is sixty-five degrees... It's too early for parabolic partial differential equations, but the mug's been sitting awhile.

 

"Where is Mulder?" I ask the boy. I take a big sip. Another. "Where's your father?"

 

"Mulder will be back. Hang tight, Scully." He answers in a manner again eerily similar to his father.

 

"You're listening to Mulder? Where is he?"

 

The pitch is off, but the inflection, the cadence, and annoyed tone are dead-on as the boy says, "Shit, Scully. I'm a little busy."

 

"That's not a nice word," I say sternly. "Seriously, where is he? Mulder, where are you?"

 

The boy watches me with wide hazel eyes, seeming taken aback.

 

I don't see Mulder's coat or boots. He's carried in more firewood, but his rifle, his pistol, and his keys are gone.

 

I sit up in bed. The coffee cup lands on the nightstand with a thump. Mulder doesn't need his Jeep keys and rifle for chores, and I'm pretty sure he hasn't gone for donuts or a newspaper. "Where is your father? When will he be back?"

 

The boy kneels on the bed beside me. He keeps his lips pressed together, but he leans left, eyeing my bare back.

 

I tuck the blanket tighter before I create some Oedipal complex. "This is important. I need you to talk out loud. When will Mulder be back? An hour? A day? What are we supposed to do? Wait?"

 

An uneasy, big-eyed silence is my non-answer.

 

Mulder can't have abandoned us. He can't expect me to take the boy back to Alpha Colony on my own. I don't know where we are. Mulder drove for thirty minutes in the fog, and through a maze of forest and backroads. Even if I do find the main road, a woman, driving alone: I won't make it twenty miles.

 

I try an alternate approach. "What is your father doing right now?"

 

Mulder's son still doesn't answer. I'm unsure how to proceed. I can't browbeat or flash my badge at a four-year-old. Resorting to bribery seems premature and, anyway, we're out of Lifesavers. "Speak," I plead.

 

He speaks. "You made a baby with Mulder," I'm informed. He seems both fascinated and disapproving. "You were sad."

 

I'm gonna need a much hotter, much larger cup of coffee. I keep my expression neutral. The boy was asleep last night. I'm a medical doctor; I know a sleeping child when I see one.

 

The boy hears my thoughts, I remember. All my thoughts. All Mulder's thoughts. Swear words, fantasies, memories. Of course, I can't concentrate on Barney or the periodic table or worrying about Mulder; my head's full of Brown Chicken, Brown Cow as I feel the boy tripping through.

 

"Mulder- Mulder didn't mean to make me sad," I stammer, which is the truth.

 

The boy puts a warm little hand on my face. He smiles. I don't understand what he's doing. I smile too, and my beard-burned face feels less raw. A warmth spreads through my abdomen, groin, and thighs.

 

The boy sits back.

 

I feel better. The stuffy nose from the nosebleed, the ache in my shoulder, even the soreness between my legs: all seem lessened.

 

All seem absent, which is scientifically impossible. I roll my neck and my shoulders. I look at the boy. He grins like he presented me with a masterpiece of preschool finger-painting.

 

Before, Mulder believed Jeremiah Smith could heal, but Mulder also believed in vampires and the chupacabra.

 

It's the placebo effect, I tell myself, like raki and faith healing. The power of suggestion in combination with an acetylcholine hiccough in my sympathetic nervous system. Factor in a good night's sleep, caffeine, and it's all perfectly...

 

I look at the scrape on my palm. I see smooth skin. Smooth skin that wasn't present last night; I'm certain of it. "Did you- What did you do?"

 

"I fixed you," Mulder's young son says matter-of-factly.

 

"You fixed me? You can heal people?"

 

Last night, Mulder said the boy could do things.

 

Miraculous things.

 

"I fixed you," he repeats.

 

Cells 'fix' bodies. Macrophalages and lymphocytes, collagen and granulation tissue. What triggers platelets to clot differs from the reason white blood cells attack infection. Different tissues heal at different rates. Some cells heal little, or not at all. Some immune functions occur only during sleep. Can the boy reverse the build-up of lactic acid that causes muscle soreness? Or is he altering my subjective experience of pain? How does he trigger the growth to new dermal cells while immediately causing the old ones to- Well, to vanish?

 

"How did you fix me?" Given he's wearing Barney underwear, I rephrase the question. "What exactly did you fix?"

 

Predictably, I get wide-eyed silence.

 

My heart pounds as I check my palm again. He doesn't merely heal; he stops the healing process. Otherwise, I'd have a keloid or hypertrophic scar. He restores the body to perfect homeostasis. Instantly. Effortlessly. Impossibly.

 

I feel a sudden need to check downstairs for vampires and the chupacabra. Instead, I examine my palm again. Give my arm a pinch. I'm awake.

 

The boy sits cross-legged on the bed, a miniature Mulder with a halo of brown curls and abilities that defy everything I know of science.

 

"Where is your father?" I don't care if the boy answers in iambic fucking pentameter.

 

"Mulder's getting Lynn."

 

I didn't ask Mulder to 'get' Lynn. I said we'd deliver the message about Lynn and let her husband 'get' her. Mulder's ditched me to babysit while he's off adding to his body count.

 

As I fume, the boy stares at me so long it's discomforting. Before I mentally confess my every sin and sexual encounter, I retaliate with prime numbers. Two, three, five, seven, eleven: I recite them inside my head. At 173, he slides off the bed and goes to the kitchen shelves. At 331, he's at the foot of the bed, but at 569 he's back to the cans and boxes of food. To the military backpack Mulder took from Marita's barn. Mulder's son acts like a puppy that needs to go out.

 

"Are you hungry?" I'm still sitting in bed, waiting for the scrape to reappear on my palm. "Do you want breakfast?"

 

The boy's expression suggests he finds making such a request preposterous. "Yes."

 

"I'm not your father. I can't hear that you're hungry." I wrap the blanket around me and scramble up like he'll starve in the next minute. "You have to talk out loud."

 

The boy stands over Mulder's backpack. The zipper's open a few inches but caught on the camouflage fabric. I wiggle the fabric free and open the pack. It's full of granola and candy bars. Juice boxes. Dried fruit, pretzels, and frosted animal crackers. Mulder's portioned the food into little Zip-lock bags so the boy can open them. I find flashlights, some tiny shoes and clothes, a miniature jacket, a green Matchbox Jeep, and, in a side pocket, a small, loaded, revolver.

 

"Don't touch that unless Mulder says," the boy orders.

 

"I'm a medical doctor and an FBI Agent. I can handle a weapon."

 

He's looking at my cleavage again.

 

I give him the animal crackers, but spot a just-add-water box of blueberry muffin mix on a kitchen shelf. I can add water. Muffins seem maternal and based on what I've observed of Mulder's parenting standards, artificial blueberry bits seem practically wholesome. "If Mulder has a muffin pan, do you want muffins?"

 

The boy pitter-patters through my head, maybe trying to figure out what muffins are. "Yes," he announces. "I'm hungry. I want muffins."

 

The muffin mix waits while I empty my bladder, wipe off, and wash my hands in the bathroom. I examine my palm yet again. I inspect my face in the mirror for beard burn that's absent. I still have a tattoo. A microchip in my neck. A faint scar on my abdomen. I look for insect bites or bruises. There aren't any.

 

I get dressed, top off my coffee cup, hang up the boy's wet towel, and soldier on.

 

You know what would have been nice, Mulder? I think very, very loudly, while Mulder's son seems engrossed by the tadpole jar and I rummage through the little kitchen. I'd appreciate some care and feeding instructions regarding this little uber-human you've created.

 

Mulder isn't listening.

 

I wonder how often the four-year-old gets left alone while his father's off killing people. From the look of the backpack: often.

 

The muffin mix says 'Bake at 350 degrees,' but Mulder's oven thermometer reads '450.' I fan the oven door a few times. There's no muffin tin, so we're having blueberry bread. With- I scan the shelves again. A container of powdered Tang bears an expiration date of 2001. The powder inside has condensed into a solid orange block.

 

"I'm thirsty," the boy says. "I want Tang."

 

I find a butter knife and poke the orange block uncertainly. It was good enough for astronauts, and sucrose doesn't go bad. I chisel out a serving of Tang, drop it in the Lando Calrissian glass, add what I assume is potable water from Mulder's kitchen sink, and breakfast is underway.

 

I swear, if Mulder's son needs stitches, armed back-up, or help reading a toxicology report, I'll have that handled.

 

I get the blueberry bread in the oven, put pants on the boy, and blow out the lamp. I go to the window and open the drapes, hoping to see Mulder returning. The sun's rising behind the clouds, illuminating fields of frost-covered weeds around the stable and miles of forest. I make out hills in the distance but no highways. A hundred yards beyond the burnt-out farmhouse, fallen trees block the gravel driveway. Several dirt roads disappear into the trees, but none look familiar.

 

As I stand at the window, drinking coffee and worrying, Mulder's son wanders over with the tadpole's jar. He's taken the lid off. Skippy the Tadpole floats belly up and unmoving. My skill at determining time and cause of death don't seem relevant, but as a forensic pathologist, I can attest Skippy stinks.

 

"Oh no." I use my best Aunt Dana voice. "He went to tadpole Heaven. We'll get another one. In spring." Frogs stopped laying eggs months ago. I squat down. "As soon as Mulder's back, maybe we can catch a lizard. We'll catch crickets to feed it. Do you like lizards?"

 

All little boys like lizards, and I get a faint grin. The same way Mulder grinned when he opened a new X-file. The boy holds the glass jar out to me. Skippy the Tadpole twitches. It wiggles, rights itself, and resumes swimming.

 

"I fixed him," Mulder's son tells me proudly.

 

                    ***

 

Even with every soul in attendance, the residents of Alpha Colony wouldn't have filled an average high school auditorium. Scattered across the Greenbrier Resort's old golf course, we looked like a scant, rag-tag turnout for an evening concert in Central Park. The men played Frisbee or lay on the grass and enjoyed the setting summer sun. A few - the few with women - had brought pillows and blankets. Others sat on the roofs of the maintenance buildings or atop tractor trailers parked along the road, letting their legs dangle off the sides. The men had no need to scale buildings to see pyrotechnics. I blamed testosterone and a disproportionately large number of them with sniper training.

 

I had no planned destination, so as Lawrence North let his truck idle forward, I followed the truck's wake. Amy sat in the center seat and, though the baby seat was on the passenger side, Amy held the baby. Cynthia rode in the back. A boom box near the beer table played Neil Young's _Old Man_ , and Lawrence drove three miles per hour as he nosed along.

 

A shrieking boy barreled past me. His sister followed with a water gun and a vendetta. Two men, one from aboveground and a forager from the bunker, offered to carry my medical bag. Another man offered a beer. Another man offered beer and a prime seat atop a tractor trailer. As of late, leaving my clinic felt like being Scarlett O'Hara at a barbecue, except the gentlemen had graying temples and automatic weapons.

 

Lawrence parked in front of the tractor shed, backing in so the windshield faced the open field. I contemplated my choices. I had no burning desire to join the party but being the one soul still inside the bunker seemed sad. As I scanned the crowd, Prichard's voice called, "Dr. Scully." I looked up. Prichard sat with Skinner and Moovera and a few other men along the rusted edge of the shed's roof.

 

I shaded my eyes with my hand. Four of the men looked pleased to see me. Our fearless leader, on the end, looked not entirely displeased. Skinner looked as if a waitress mixed up his order, but still brought him something he liked.

 

"You know they'll launch the fireworks into the air, right?" I asked. "Does any one of you have a tetanus vaccination less than ten years old?"

 

Anthony Prichard, RN, US Army, and master of nonchalance (except regarding human female genitalia), gestured for me to climb up. "Boss man was up here first." 

 

I looked up at the men. All except Moovera had a red plastic cup and a slightly too-relaxed expression. "Do you have any idea how many deaths result from falls while under the influence of alcohol?"

 

None of them must have known; I didn't get an answer.

 

Johnny Cash's _Solitary Man_ emerged from the boom box's speakers. The young man in charge of the music furrowed his brow and checked the treble and bass settings. Walter Skinner watched an empty spot on the road to my right.

 

They hadn't even used a ladder. The snowplow - in low demand in early July - was pulled forward; I assumed the men climbed atop it before pulling themselves up and over the edge of the roof.

 

I looped my medical bag over my shoulder, scaled the snowplow, and found myself eye-level with their boots. I couldn't reach the edge of the roof without jumping for it.

 

Skinner's hand came down as I stood pondering my options. He took my bag, offered both hands, and helped me climb up and over him in an undignified but effective manner.

 

The only empty place on the roof's edge was beside Skinner.

 

"You brought your bag, Dr. Scully?" Prichard asked. "Are we anticipating a house call tonight?"

 

Their rifles lay farther back on the roof, but I made Skinner shift sideways so the Glock in his tactical holster didn't poke my thigh as I sat beside him. I slid my sidearm and holster toward the rifle pile.

 

"Home-brewed alcohol and five-year-old scavenged fireworks?" I reminded Prichard. "Even if we get through this without treating traumatic blast amputations and third-degree burns, I'm anticipating a pandemic of PTSD as soon as the first firework explodes. Doesn't this evening have all the makings of 'a bad idea' to any of you?"

 

Skinner, in fatigue pants and a military-issue green t-shirt, leaned back with his hands on the rusty rooftop. In answer to my quizzical eyebrows, he shrugged. "I like fireworks."

 

Prichard held up his cup. "We survived the end of the world. I think it's safe to live a little dangerously, Dr. Scully."

 

I sighed and leaned back as well. "There's absolutely no logic to that statement," I felt compelled to say.

 

The sky glowed deep purple and the stars emerged. A warm breeze rustled my hair. Beyond the road, fields of corn and wheat and oats and fruit trees and vegetables flourished. Livestock grazed, and the mountains rose tall and green and protective around us. We'd survived. Almost five years. Roughly four-hundred people - almost all military or federal agents or some manner of survivalist - against all odds, we'd built a colony productive and stable enough to declare a holiday. 

 

The boom box switched to Kenny Rogers singing the late 60's LSD anthem _Just Dropped In_. Beside me, Skinner mouthed the lyrics. The fingers of his hands moved against the metal roof; the right hand pressed chords while the left moved against nonexistent strings.

 

"Did you select tonight's music?"

 

Skinner paused to pick up and drink from his cup, but he swallowed and set the cup down in time to play the chorus.

 

"Artists produced music outside the American Southwest and after 1973," I said. "Right up until the alien ships arrived."

 

"Not good music," the boss man responded, and I resigned myself to an evening of Stevie Nicks and Linda Ronstadt.

 

Below us, Lawrence, standing at the truck's window, tried to convince Amy, still inside the cab, to let him hold the baby. He made a good argument: he'd seen plenty of fireworks, which would wake the baby; he'd hold the baby and let Amy watch. Amy kept the baby on her lap and gave Lawrence her most stubborn of silent stubborn looks.

 

The men had a game of flag football going. The Frisbee players extended their throws to people sitting atop the buildings and trucks. The second story participants - all with a beer in one hand - leaned and stretched enthusiastically to catch the discs. A large group of former-soldiers fiddled with wires and boxes near a bank of scavenged fireworks. Blowing things up was a popular job in Alpha Colony. Given the options, I anticipated my first patients of the evening would result from some combination of alcohol and discord over fuses.

 

Lawrence returned with two cups: one amber-colored and one for Amy containing some clear liquid. Lawrence offered Amy a sip from his cup, but she wrinkled her nose. Our kitchen staff and the chef, after many evenings of reading up on the craft and tinkering and sampling and tinkering some more, had produced gallons and gallons of an alcoholic, beer-colored beverage. In the culinary scheme of After, successfully producing beer didn't rival mastering a smokehouse or saving seeds or getting a cannery running, but they seemed proud.

 

No one had offered me a cup, and I probably should have thought of that before I climbed atop a roof.

 

As Jackson Browne sang _Doctor My Eyes_ , Skinner put his hand on my back, the first time he'd touched me in months. "Scully, I want to ask you something."

 

"Would I like a beer? Yes. Yes, I would. Can you Wingardium Leviosa up a cup?"

 

"Can I wing what?"

 

I made a wand-flicking gesture toward the table across the road. My nephews had loved Harry Potter.

 

Skinner's brow furrowed in a manner, Before, he reserved exclusively for Mulder.

 

"What is it you want to ask?" I prompted.

 

Skinner looked at the darkening horizon. He worried his mouth, swung his feet, and exhaled.

 

"What?" I leaned closer.

 

"Do you know Luke 18:27?"

 

I did. "'And He said, the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.' It's Christ saying miracles exist for those who have faith."

 

Skinner nodded. "The spaceship in Africa that brought the fish back to life; you thought it might have healed you, too. That's what Cancerman meant. What was impossible for modern medicine was possible by divine intervention."

 

My bravado faded. I took a turn at nodding.

 

Quietly, he asked, "Why did you ask Brewster for pregnancy tests and prenatal vitamins, but you haven't needed feminine hygiene products in months and months?" And, barely audible, "From that night: tell me you're not pregnant. Late March, early April: fine. I know I'm not your favorite person right now, but we'll figure it out. Just not that night."

 

The only response I managed was open-mouthed shock. He'd thought this through. Counted months. Walter Skinner took time away from running Alpha Colony to check my lists for the foragers. Check what I got from the commissary.

 

"Say 'no' Dana," he instructed. "Or say 'another night.' Say, 'another night, another man,' if that makes you happy, but please God don't say 'yes.' Don't let that be Cancerman's legacy to you, to me."

 

"Amy's pregnant again. She’s in her first trimester, and Lawrence hasn't told anyone. That's- That's the test and the vitamins."

 

He nodded.

 

"As for the other: Brewster's foragers are all middle-aged, formerly-married men accustomed to doing my shopping. They all automatically grab a box of tampons each time they go out. Like you do. Like half of Houston's traders do. I have a drawer full. At almost forty, I think I'm set for life. No, I'm not pregnant."

 

Skinner nodded again. He watched the flag football game, which had become a high-spirited chase in the dark involving a football. The music continued, but he didn't mouth the lyrics.

 

More stars emerged, and bats swooped through the dying light, chasing insects.

 

"We're safe here," I told Skinner. "No one starves. No one is above our laws - except you and your contraband hooch. I can close my eyes at night and not worry about being kidnapped or raped or beaten or sold. We have families, and families mean Santa and swing sets and Fourth of July fireworks. They mean humanity, not just survival." I leaned back and put my hand over his. "That's because of you. You are one of the good guys. If I could have a child now, conceived that night or any other, this is where I'd want to do it."

 

I got another casual, though longer nod. His hand remained beneath mine.

 

Lawrence North's driver-side door opened. Rather than get out, Amy snapped her fingers for Lawrence's dog to jump down from the truck bed and into the cab. Old Cynthia went to the tailgate and whimpered. Lawrence lifted the dog and carried her to the cab to join Amy and the baby. The truck door closed again. Cynthia got the middle seat, and Amy and the baby sat behind the steering wheel, next to where Lawrence stood.

 

A preschool-aged boy I recognized wandered onto the empty field in front of the bank of fireworks. A crowd of men bolted after the little boy. Captain Houston, back to being the picture of health, reached the boy first. Houston scooped him up, tossed him playfully in the air, and returned the child to Dmitri, who seemed to have just noticed. Dmitri sat on a blanket with Julie the Prostitute, another small child, a toddler, and a baby.

 

"Not a word, Scully," Skinner said. "It's just for tonight."

 

As long as Dmitri didn't steal my opiates and Julie didn't spread STD's I had to treat with ancient penicillin, I had no horse in this race. "You don't answer to me."

 

Without looking at me, he said, "Of course I do. That's how it works. Who do you think this safe place is for?"

 

I didn't know what to say, so I squeezed his hand.

 

Night truly took hold, and familiar patterns emerged in the sky. The heavens had been gray for so long, and I was so seldom out of the bunker I'd forgotten the stars remained. I saw Vega. Deneb. The cloudy path of the Milky Way. With so few electric lights, we saw the night sky as sailors did at sea. Fourth and fifth magnitude stars twinkled like God scattered glitter across velvet-black fabric. Even smudges that might be globular clusters or comets stood out, but I saw no red, glowing orb in the W of Cassiopeia. Supernova 1572, Tycho Brahe's star, remained quiet.

 

As The Rolling Stones began _Sympathy for the Devil_ , the first firework hissed, shot upward, and exploded in a red shower of sparks. The next two fizzled but a green spiral swirled up, went supernova, and rained blue stardust. Children pointed. Inside Lawrence's truck, Cynthia barked, though obligingly rather than frightened.

 

Skinner passed me his beer. He laid back on the rooftop with his hands clasped across his chest, looking upward. For a while, he helped The Rolling Stones with the lyrics. The men got lucky with the old fireworks again. A bright blue rocket exploded into a sparkling shower, and I didn't hear anyone lose a finger.

 

"The only thing her parents liked about me was I wasn't a hippie," Skinner told the night sky. "Their seventeen-year-old daughter brought home a twenty-three-year-old criminal justice major from Nowhere, Texas. I was going to college on the GI bill and, after my father got sick, driving home every weekend to help with the ranch. One day, on campus, she was parked beside me in this little MG convertible that wouldn't start. I'm bartending at night for gas money; she's a debutante getting an associate's degree in fashion. That's a real degree," he advised me. "Rather than law school, I became a cop. I applied to the FBI. Her parents weren't thrilled at our engagement, even - or maybe, especially - after her father caught us in his guesthouse. Twice."

 

I set the beer aside and lay down beside Skinner. Our shoulders touched. "You were a bad influence on that girl, Walter."

 

"I was a very bad influence on that girl." He savored some pleasant memory. "Do you know the Texas statute of limitations on prosecuting statutory rape? At least in 1977?"

 

"No."

 

"I do," he said, "and by the time it was up, I was a Deputy Assistant Director." His chest rose and fell. "She failed a class the semester she should have graduated, probably because her cop fiancé kept convincing her to ditch. She had to make up the credit that summer. She was nineteen by then, and I had an apartment in the city, but it was 1979. Her mother stuck her in an all-female building with Nurse Ratched guarding the lobby. No men allowed inside and no phone calls after curfew, which was nine. I reported for work at 7:00AM, and on a good night, I finished at 9:00PM."

 

The smoke from the fireworks wafted across the sky, clouding the stars.

 

"Her room didn't have a trellis?" I asked. "A fire escape? A grappling hook?"

 

"She had a roommate, but I had a patrol car and a badge. July fourth, just after the 11:00PM shift change, three other young cops and I responded to a call about a break-in at her building." He tilted his head an inch closer to me. "It's possible I got Helena to make the call from a phone booth a hundred miles away. Anyway, we created enough ruckus that Nurse Ratched lost track of which men were where, I slipped into a stairwell, and the guy with the next shift drove off in my patrol car."

 

"What about the roommate?"

 

Skinner gestured skyward in a manner suggesting the beer beside me wasn't his first, second, or third. "There was a rooftop. With the pillows and pink blankets off her bed, and a dime bag I took off some lead-foot that morning. We lay up there watching the stars and the fireworks. It was so beautiful. She was so beautiful. I lit up, but she didn't even want a hit. She said we didn't have much time together, and she didn't want to be stoned during any of it. She didn't want me stoned, either. No more Mary Jane, Walter. No reds to make me sleep, no blue velvet so I didn't feel anything. You're joining the FBI, Walter. We're getting married, Walter." His voice softened. "I have nightmares, Sharon. My father's dying, and the war's not over inside my head, Sharon." He studied the broad arch of the Milky Way as the old music played below us. "That night, she said my scars made her sad. Not sad at seeing them, but sad at knowing I'd lost something inside the way other soldiers lost limbs. Until that night, I thought- I thought she didn't know. I thought she had no idea who she was marrying. I never told her what happened in Vietnam, but I did put down the joint and admit the scars made me sad, too."

 

I put my hand over his again and lay watching the infinite heavens. A firework hissed upward, disappeared, and returned in a red ball hanging overhead so long it defied gravity.

     

"It was that night," he said. "The last time I got high was the night she got pregnant."

 

Another firework exploded in a shower of silver dust. Mick Jagger sang about acts mankind once considered the worst atrocities, back when mankind thought ourselves alone in the universe. The scent of gunpowder drifted through the valley, and Skinner's hand and shoulder felt warm against mine. I heard the pop of bottle rockets, and children laughing, and the sounds of a makeshift world temporarily at peace. The stars remained quiet and unchanging, as the ancient astronomers believed. It had been Tycho Brahe, in 1572, who noticed a new star in Cassiopeia. The star grew brighter and redder until it vanished in a manner medieval science couldn't explain. Perhaps the Heavens weren't fixed, Brahe postulated. Perhaps the stars didn't revolve around our little planet.

 

"Is that Cassiopeia up there?" Skinner reached toward the sky as if he touched each star of the flattened W with his fingertip.

 

"It is. And Draco and Ursa Major, all around the North Star."

 

"Cassiopeia is the only constellation I can ever find. She could find them all, though."

 

Mulder and I were two opposite substances strengthened and stabilized by their bond. A chemical reaction, forever changed, forever joined. Walter Skinner and I, though: we were made of the same stuff. Duty, loyalty, strength. Family, faith. In a different world, in a different life, I would have loved him.

 

"I know it's not the same." I stroked his hand. "Any more than Mulder listening to you is the same. But if you want to find a pink blanket and meet me back up here in a few hours-" I paused. "That's fine."

 

Willie Nelson's cover of _Crazy_ sidled from the boom box and through the darkness. Skinner shifted his hips appreciatively but asked, "Why up here, Scully?" He ran his fingertips up my wrist. "Do you have a roommate?"

 

                    ***

 

Sperm can survive inside the vagina for up to five days, and I left Alpha Colony just over two days ago. Sixty hours ago, I lay in my cold cement bedroom in my medical clinic, with Walter Skinner asleep beside me. Now, the woodstove crackles in Mulder's stable apartment, and Fox Mulder faces me, with his young son asleep in bed between us.

 

Mulder can't explain what the boy did earlier, I think because the boy doesn't know. Mulder's son "fixed" me, so I "can have a baby." What that entailed, to a four-year-old, time will tell. The boy also made the powdered Tang fall off a kitchen shelf, and once Mulder returned, healed a bite wound on Mulder's wrist which, I assume, came courtesy of Lynn. Mulder hasn't said, but I assume he accomplished his mission, and in a fairytale for the ages, dying Lynn and her remaining husband are happily reunited.

 

"Does he really not have a name?" I ask Mulder, as the boy sleeps. "Your son?"

 

Mulder shakes his head 'no.'

 

"He needs a name. I need something to call him." I thought a few seconds. "Call him 'William,' after your father."

 

After some consideration, Mulder nods.

 

Mulder's showered and shaved, but breakfast dishes remain in the sink. The boy's drunk so much sugar-water and eaten so much burnt blueberry bread his little belly pooches out. His brown hair curls, his cheeks flush, and he looks like a cherubic version of Mulder. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes move rapidly as he dreams.

 

I adjust the blanket over his legs.

 

I think of the Greenbrier Bunker's shelves filled with old peanut butter and pickles and oatmeal and cornmeal. Smoked hams and dried fruit and jerky and anything else we can figure out how to preserve. I think of the school. I think of Captain Houston's incorrigible smile and family photo, and how quickly he grabbed Julie's child away from the fireworks. Steve. 'Steve' is a nice name.

 

"Can William stun people, like you can?" I ask Mulder. "Listen hard enough to harm them?"

 

This child can give life. Can he also take life? Can he truly play God?

 

Mulder puts a finger to his lips, wanting me to keep that a secret. The boy probably can, once he's older. Right now, he's so little. Even Mulder speaks to get the boy's attention, which must create a fun-house maze of mirrors in both their heads. Judging from Mulder's scars, his son's healing ability is recent. So is the telekinesis. Mulder's stashed things on high shelves - candy, a box cutter, lighter fluid, lamp oil - as if, the last time William was here, that made them unobtainable.

 

Mulder's eavesdropping on my thoughts but seems in no hurry to leave. He's added wood to the stove and made more coffee and lounged in bed with me for half an hour as the boy sleeps. I still wear Mulder's t-shirt and a pair of his jeans rolled up at the ankle, though the clothes he washed before dawn have dried.

 

A storm's approaching. Outside the window behind Mulder, a series of rapidly-passing clouds cast dark shadows over the empty field. I see run-down but fixable animal pens. A fallow field once held a garden. There's space for Mulder and his son to play baseball. A pond for swimming.

 

I'm a liability, I tell myself before my little fantasy takes root again. Every second I spend outside Alpha Colony is a risk - to me, and to this child's future. We need to put the boy in the Jeep and get on the road.

 

Mulder doesn't move, so neither do I.

 

William has never seen a doctor. Never been to story time or watched fireworks. He's probably never encountered another child aside from his baby sister. For the boy, telepathically, his mother and sister remain present. So will his father. Mulder can hear the boy and the boy can hear Mulder. I'm the only one losing Mulder.

 

If I asked Mulder, he'd say I've lost him. That I lost him years ago.

 

I take Mulder's hand. He looks down at our fingers. "What happened to you? I need to know."

 

His lips move wordlessly a few times. "Bad things. On one of their ships: bad things."

 

"What bad things?"

 

The sky darkens, and more shadows pass outside. With effort, Mulder says, "They made me see things. On the ship, I found you hiding. You were so scared. Cold. Trembling. You kissed me." His hand tightens. "I thought she was you, Scully."

 

"But she wasn't me. She was Marita."

 

Mulder nods. From his expression, he must have realized a minute too late. I imagine it: the two of them in some shadowy corner on a spaceship. Celebrating finding each other, celebrating being alive. In my mind, I see Mulder kissing pretty Marita, touching her. Sliding his fingers through her blonde hair, pressing her breast upward with his hand. I'm an abductee. I remember being fully aware of what's happening, yet unable to resist.

 

"Don't," Mulder says. "Don't picture it."

 

"Mulder, you didn't know."

 

"I knew. They let me see what I wanted to see."

 

"That's not true."

 

I'm not sure Mulder hears me.

 

"They didn't torture Marita," he says. "They made her watch- Watch as they tortured me. Except she saw Krycek. Their ships left - her pregnant, me nearly dead. But their punishment-" Mulder nods to the boy asleep between us. "It's genius. I hear her thoughts. She hears me. I don't love her; she doesn't love me. I want you. She wants Alex Krycek, but she can't face him anymore than I can face you, Scully."

 

I raise my hand slowly, making sure Mulder sees before I touch his freshly-shaven face. I trace the scar on his cheek. The scar is man-made: a punch from a strong man wearing heavy rings or brass knuckles. A blow with enough force to fracture the zygomatic arch, and the malar and maxillary bones. The scars on Mulder's forearms came from a knife attack. Mulder had something another man or a group of men wanted. Food. Water. A warm, safe place to hole up during snowstorms that had lasted months. A beautiful woman with an infant.

 

Mulder closes his eyes and presses his face against my palm. He leans over the boy and kisses me. Tenderly, carefully. As my lips part, I discover one of the joys of having a child. Between us, William stirs. He opens his eyes. Naptime has ended.

 

Mulder sighs and shifts away. The boy sits up. William looks at the wide, rough crossbeams bracing the roof. A second later, so does Mulder.

 

A high-pitched hum approaches and grows so loud it blocks all other sounds. A swarm of locusts, I think. Rather biblical, but not unheard of this season, in this area. I glance out the window again, expecting to see the swarm's shadow. Snow clouds loom, but no locusts land on the windowpanes or descend on the field.

 

Something impossibly big does land on the roof. A second later, another thump. A third. The deafening insectoid hum continues. Skittering feet move above us.

 

"Oh my God. What the hell is that?" I barely hear myself speaking.

 

"It ain't Santa," Mulder yells. 

 

The largest insect known to man, Meganeura, had a wingspan of over two feet. It flew but, with a body seventeen inches long, certainly wouldn't sound like a large man landing on a roof. It also existed, as did all giant insects, in an environment with twenty percent more oxygen and five-hundred million years ago.

 

Mulder scoops up the boy and blanket, grabs a pistol, and heads for the door. He snatches his keys. I get my holster and follow. The worn wooden steps are smooth beneath my bare feet.

 

In the stable's dark belly, Mulder glances at the Jeep's canvas top, and opens the armored Humvee's metal door. As soon as I'm inside, Mulder hands the boy to me. I move to lock the passenger door, but in a military vehicle, there's no lock. I try to remember how vehicles are locked in combat, but my father and brothers were sailors, and Mothra and his friends are on the roof.

 

The closed, latched stable door rattles and protests as something outside presses in. Mulder glances around the shadowy room. The old pitchforks and rakes look useless. There are no chairs, no lumber. Get a sawhorse from the tack room, I think, and Mulder does. He trips over something in the darkness, and curses, but he gets the door braced.

 

I try to remember what I saw in the stable last night. Piles of supplies barricade the Dutch doors in the stalls. The tack room has no doors or windows. The stairs, I think. The upstairs windows are the weakest entry point. Mulder flips an old wheelbarrow over against the door to the apartment. He wedges it tight. He glances at me. I can't think of anything else except the stable has a dirt floor and I hope these aren't burrowing insects.

 

Mulder slides behind the Humvee's wheel. He pushes his door handle down, engaging a latch at the bottom of the door. He locks both the back doors and reaches over me and the boy to lock mine.

 

The giant insects' whining hum mutes to the volume of a too-loud television. The boy climbs to Mulder, who covers the child with the blanket and holds him against his chest. We sit in the cold, dark military vehicle, barefooted, with two pistols and whatever Mulder's stowed in this Humvee. I see two bags of sunflower seeds beside the gearshift. A pair of sunglasses on the visor. A cardboard box of cassette tapes and a portable cassette player. In the back seat, I spot a plastic purple dinosaur. A Polaroid camera and two packs of film. A camouflage-colored man's winter coat mostly covers a copy of _Hustler_. So we're set.

 

I've forgotten my backpack and the pack Mulder keeps for William. I'm not wearing a bra, or shoes, or long johns, or carrying a flashlight.

 

Fuck this apocalypse. Next time, Mulder and I are barricading ourselves inside the Ritz Carlton with an AK-47, room service, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and a giant bug zapper.

 

"They'll get Skippy," the boy whispers.

 

Mulder glances at the door to the stairs leading to the apartment, but he must decide Skippy is on his own.

 

Next, the boy says, "They're hungry."

 

Red eyes glow above the closed door in one of the stalls. Claws slide against the wood.

 

Mulder scoots lower in the seat and holds the boy tighter. I think, like me, he's even trying to breathe quietly. Hoping the insects will give up and fly away. If not, if we have to, Mulder can drive through the stable door and try to outrun these creatures. We can try to shoot them. As Mulder drives and I shoot at one bug, I pray the rest of these giant insects don't peel off the top of this Humvee and eat the boy like a tasty sardine.

 

Through the space between the bottom of the stable door and the ground, I see a series of black, spikey-haired legs ending in forked claws skitter past. One creature. Two creatures pass.

 

The third set of feet stops. The stable door rattles on its hinges again.

 

"He's hurting her," the boy whispers.

 

"Who?" I ask softly, as Mulder tries to hush him. "Lynn?"

 

"Marita." His whisper seems like a yell. He flinches. "Krycek's hurting her."

 

"Sex isn't hurting," Mulder says. "Stop listening."

 

"He's hurting her," the boy repeats, louder. "Make him stop, damn it. She won't make him stop. Mulder, make him stop!"

 

This doesn't seem the time for another discussion about nice and not nice words. The boy flinches again, and his eyes tear.

 

The stable door's hinges creak and protest, and something claws at the wood again. If Marita has the same abilities as Mulder, she can stop Krycek anytime she wants. She won't, though. Mulder and I encountered women like her, Before. She won't stop Krycek, and she'll defend him with her dying breath.

 

A forked claw digs at the dirt below the wooden door.

 

"Don't listen to Marita." Mulder glances at me. "Listen to Scully. Remember something, Scully."

 

                    ***

 

Fox Mulder wasn't Max Fenig: an ostracized, lonely man eking out a marginal existence in order to uncover the truth. The truth about what, he didn't know. Someone perpetually tormented and running in place, unable to release his past nor connect with any real future. A NICAP-hat wearing, paranoia-spouting visionary seeming bent on self-destruction, and unintentionally ensnaring those around him in the conspiracy's whirlpool of death, as well. Mulder wasn't Fenig.

 

Fox Mulder had fish.

 

Mulder had six mollies in the late winter of 1997. Four days after Max Fenig's death and three days after Special Agent Pendrell's murder. In the world of Before, Madeleine Albright became the first female Secretary of State. President Clinton, sworn in for a second term, banned federally-funded human cloning - exempting the Consortium, apparently. In California, the Heaven's Gate cult members ended their lives. In an expensive Silver Springs nursing home, Sharon Skinner lingered in a vegetative state. I battled cancer. Barring an opportunistic infection, Sharon Skinner would likely outlive me.

 

Men come and go, but Earth abides, the Bible says.

 

"That's a mistranslation from the original Aramaic. Earth doesn't abide without you," Mulder yelled from his bathroom. "Who's gonna second-guess me? No one else on the whole planet understands the Bureau requisition forms; how would I ever get a new slide projector? Who's gonna bring lunch and make plane reservations and jump up and down in her little heels about some inconsequential scientific detail while I'm busy saving the world?"

 

"Mulder, that might be the most narcissistic statement ever uttered," I responded tiredly.

 

Medicine bottles clicked against each other as he rifled through his prescription collection. "Vicodin," he called. "Percocet." I didn't answer, so he offered me, "Flexeril. Oxycontin. Regular Tylenol, Tylenol Extra Strength. Plain old Aspirin. Plus, I have pills from a Canadian ER that could be anything." A plastic bottle rattled. "They're blue."

 

"Mulder, I'm fine," I said, though I wasn't. My head pounded and my pride smarted. I sat on Mulder's couch with a bathroom trashcan full of bloody tissues and another box of Kleenex held at the ready.

 

According to the clock above Mulder's desk, Agent Pendrell's funeral started in twenty minutes. Unless Mulder found a not-bloody women's blouse or sweater in his medicine cabinet, we wouldn't make it.

 

I blotted my nose again. Still seeping.

 

Lacking any productive options and unable to dissuade Mulder, I leaned back on the sofa and looked around the little apartment. An empty teacup sat on the table and stacks of X-files covered the desk beside the computer: Mulder's weekend reading. I tried to see the woven rug on the floor, the books on the coffee table. I heard sounds from the apartment above: footsteps, water running, a distant radio. Mulder had his TV muted, but the opening credits of _La Femme Nikita_ rolled.

 

"TVs make pictures?" A little boy's voice intrudes into my memory, and Mulder's voice hushes him. For a few seconds, I hear the insects drone, but the sounds of Alexandria return. Traffic. A distant police siren. The gentle babble of the fish tank. Lights humming, a refrigerator running. The elevator down the hall. The cacophony of the world, Before.

 

Mulder returned to the living room, looking GQ perfect in a black suit and dark blue shirt. His face wasn't scarred. His dress shoes gleaned, his face was shaved, and his hair looked recently cut. I tried to look at Mulder, too - really look at him: the warmth in his eyes, the long-limbed, casual looseness of his movements. The boundless energy and wonder I'd lacked.

 

"Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

 

I lowered my tissue. "Why? So they can tell me I have cancer?"

 

He stood over me, hands on his hips, unhappy smirk on his face.

 

"Go," I said. "You're late."

 

In response, Mulder sat on the other end of the sofa. He radiated health and purpose, while I felt my body decaying internally. "There must be something I can do to make you feel better."

 

"There is. Go to Agent Pendrell's funeral. When my nosebleed stops, I'll drive home. I'm fine. I'll be fine. You can forge my name to the guestbook and bring me a program."

 

Mulder, predictably, didn't budge. I didn't have a change of clothes in my car, and I didn't have time to buy another top. Also, I would have cried in fear and humiliation if I had the energy.

 

Instead, I sighed, which I regretted because it made my forehead throb worse. "Mulder, you can sit here and watch me be sick, or you can go on with your life."

 

"I'm not leaving without you."

 

"I have a terminal cancer. Tylenol and cool washcloths don't fix this, Mulder."

 

"You have a cancer," he said. "But 'terminal' isn't part of the equation."

 

I studied Mulder's ceiling and didn't bother rehashing the argument. Our roles reversed in the past months. I understood what my doctors told me, but Mulder denied what he had to see with his own eyes. Without make-up, I looked ghostly pale, and even make-up didn't cover the shadows below my eyes. With increasing frequency, I got lightheaded. My vision blurred, and my nose bled all over me, the cream-colored sweater beneath my black suit, and anything else close by.

 

"We're in this together, Scully. We live or we die together."

 

"We don't," I said tiredly.

 

"She doesn't die," a little boy's voice whispers, sounding bored. "Are all the fish named 'Molly'?"

 

Insects drone, and Mulder hushes him again.

 

Two sharp raps jarred Mulder's apartment door, startling me. Mulder opened the door. AD Skinner stood in the hall. He wore a black suit similar to Mulder's and bore an armful of clothing on hangers and in dry cleaning and garment bags. "We have a few extra minutes. I had them stall the funeral."

 

I stood, still unsteady on my feet. "How do you stall a funeral?" I was a forensic pathologist; bodies don't get deader.

 

"Sean Pendrell was my agent. When an AD of the FBI calls the funeral home, they figure out a way," Skinner said tersely.

 

Skinner handed half the hangers to Mulder and hung the others on Mulder's coatrack. As both men hurriedly unzipped bags and ripped away plastic, I saw a strapless, floor-length, black sequined gown, and a shorter, one-shouldered black cocktail dress. Skinner held up the longer gown. "There were no 'fours' or 'sixes.' This is Versace, 'forty,'" he said, except he pronounced it Ver-sase. "Forty what? Inches? Millimeters?" He read another tag. "Die-or, and 'thirty-eight.'"

 

"Dior. Christian Dior. Those are European women's sizes," I told them.

 

Both men looked at me like I'd threatened to cancel the NBA playoffs. "Does that mean they allow extra room for body hair?" Mulder asked.

 

Skinner turned the black cocktail dress so the front faced me. The Christian Dior tag remained attached. "This one?"

 

"For what? For me?" I asked. "These are formal dresses."

 

Mulder looked puzzled. "You can't wear one?"

 

"I can't wear one to a funeral."

 

"He said a black dress," Skinner said, seeming momentarily awkward. "I just grabbed." The two designer dresses got tossed on the sofa. "This is Alexander McQueen, 'eight,' and she bought it in London. I remember the bill." He held up a minimalist black sheath but seemed to note the plunging neckline and back. "No?"

 

I shook my head.

 

Mulder proffered a gorgeous black Donna Karan suit that would have fit Missy but make me look like a hobo. I felt a childish twinge of envy. I still had student loans; my wardrobe hadn't yet included Armani or Donna Karan.

 

I stood in Mulder's foyer, the pale recipient of this impromptu goth high fashion show. I hadn't heard Mulder telephone Skinner, but I'd been in the bathroom a while, trying to salvage my make-up. "They're-" I said it before I thought. "Sir, are these your wife's dresses?"

 

Skinner glanced up.

 

"Hey G-woman." Mulder held up a simple Audrey Hepburn-style black sheath. "This says 'six.'"

 

I could put my suit coat over it.

 

I nodded, but Skinner said, "Scully, that one is old."

 

"It's fine. It's perfect. Thank you. And thank her."

 

AD Skinner studied the remaining garment bags.

 

Mulder handed over the dress. I left my bloody sweater and black skirt on Mulder's bathroom floor, zipped up the black sheath, and stepped back into my shoes. The dress was old, and loose on me. In contrast to the expensive pile of designer fashion on Mulder's sofa, this yellowed label read 'JCPenney.'

 

"Look in the mirror again," the boy's voice whispers.

 

I did. My younger self looked back with shorter, brighter red hair. Frightened, but determined to fight. Not to let cancer beat me. Drafting off Mulder's eternal optimism and Skinner's quiet strength. I didn't want to let them down. On my own, I would have curled up on the sofa, licked my wounds, and missed the funeral of a friend.

 

"Look at your breasts," William requests.

 

In Mulder's smeary bathroom mirror, my reflection furrows her brow and whispers sternly, "No. That's not nice."

 

A little gold cross hangs from a chain around my neck.

 

I returned to the living room to don my suit coat and trench coat. Mulder gave me a perfunctory glance and nodded. AD Skinner's eyes lingered sadly rather than appreciatively, I judged.

 

"Your wife won't mind?"

 

Skinner shook his head, barely moving it. "There's a car waiting. Let's go, agents."

 

He opened Mulder's apartment door. As I buttoned up and followed him out, Mulder's son whispers, "Look at the Molly fish," so I did. The aquarium glowed. The little gold and white fish, with their delicate fins, gathered to watch me.

 

"She wore that dress to my father's wake," AD Skinner said from the hall as he walked purposefully toward the elevator. "I didn't know she still had it."

 

I met Sharon Skinner once, for fifteen minutes. She'd seemed intelligent, articulate, kind. An attractive woman. The type who volunteered at art museums and videotaped Julia Child and called her husband in a panic if she saw a mouse in the garage. I'd thought her gentleness probably smoothed down AD Skinner's rough, gruff edges, and Sharon loved her husband far more than he loved her.

 

As we left Mulder's apartment, I remember thinking Sharon Skinner must also be a fan of high fashion and have the clothing budget to indulge her passion. I tried to picture AD Skinner going home to a woman like that. Attending the inaugural balls and society shindigs these dresses must have seen; Sharon Skinner hadn't worn Versace to an anniversary dinner at Applebee's. I remember trying to picture Walter Skinner as a husband, or a son, or as anything except our boss. I couldn't. Not then.

 

Mulder flipped the light switch beside his door, turned a key in the lock, and followed me.

 

As violated as I felt at Mulder calling Skinner, at wearing some other woman's clothing because a stupid, inoperable, incurable brain tumor ruined mine, I felt grateful. Less alone.

 

"Sir, when did your father pass away?" Photos of Sharon Skinner remained on Skinner's desk, but he never discussed his private life. The little I knew, I knew from Mulder or Holly - the Bureau embarrassment and the Bureau gossip. Holly said Skinner took a cup of coffee to his wife every morning before he came to work; someone saw him entering the nursing home. Holly conjectured Sharon Skinner had regained consciousness and was on the road to recovery. Holly didn't know my mother still set a place for my late father and sister at every holiday dinner.

 

"1979. Lung cancer. Right before we got married." As the elevator arrived, Skinner glanced at me. "You look fine, Agent Scully. Nice."

 

I'd looked like an anemic insomniac wearing her older sister's clothing.

 

"Thank you."

 

Mulder opened his mouth, ready with some smart crack, but Skinner added quickly, "You look fine, too, Agent Mulder. In the interest of equal opportunity, as your supervisor, I'm observing you're both appropriately and professionally dressed."

 

Mulder was not dissuaded. "Given recent events, I'm wearing a foil-lined bodysuit the AOL ad guaranteed renders me invisible to all alien craft. It's supposed to deflect the tractor beams. It chafes like crazy and I think it throws off the line of the suit a little but thank you. You look fine, too, Skinman," he said coolly. "Nice."

 

Skinner closed his eyes for a second. "Dear God, Mulder. Don't talk. Catch the bad guys and save humanity from whatever boogiemen you think are out there, but don't talk."

 

Mulder put his hand on my back, guiding me onto the elevator. In the car, I remembered as hard as I could: the world of lights and noise and safety. A world Mulder's son never saw. A world where only Mulder and people like Max Fenig believed in aliens and monsters. I made sure to look at a little Yorkie puppy on an evening stroll, and at the gray cat asleep near a window across the street. At a hundred windows lit up and shiny new cars and a plane leaving a white trail through the sky.

 

I tried to see everything. The rich interior of the chauffeured Lincoln Town car. AD Skinner, in the passenger seat, talking to someone on, at the time, what seemed a tiny flip phone: a Motorola StarTAC. Mulder, in the backseat with me. Mulder had a dark smear of my blood on his right shirt cuff. I tried to see Mulder: beautiful, dangerous, precious Mulder. Brilliant, infuriating Mulder. His fingers drumming against his knee, and the way he watched me out of the corner of his eye. He smelled of dry cleaning bags and shaving cream and starch. He looked at me. I looked back, capturing the worry and kindness in those sleepy hazel eyes.

 

The corner of Mulder's mouth turned up, giving me an anxious, self-conscious grin. "I told you I'd stop the world."

 

"You stopped a funeral."

 

"That is my plan, Agent Scully. You're not going anywhere without me. Who'll navigate and do the paperwork?"

 

I'd felt a flutter - perhaps in my queasy belly or my miserably aching head or a heart overflowing with anger and fear. But I felt it.

 

"Stoplights are red?" Mulder's son whispers in wonder.

 

                    ***

 

For every alpha, there must be an omega. A beginning and an end. In the beginning, there was God and a formless, dark void. I want to believe in a divine creator God. Somehow, there came a spark, a seed which gave rise to life on an otherwise unremarkable planet. Something created the subatomic particles and the magic binding them into atoms and elements and DNA. The hand of God - directly or indirectly - created the prehistoric plants and animals that died and decayed and over epochs, formed the fossil fuels that had powered our modern world. We humans evolved, we learned, we became self-aware. We clever creatures became able to question our place and our purpose in the universe until, in the end, the universe answered us unequivocally. We are not the top of the food chain. We are not alone.

 

Mulder and I began in a basement office more than a decade ago and traveled so far together, but everything ends. 

 

Each time I hesitate, I think of Blond Leo with a bullet wound in his forehead, and Brewster's son, and the giant insects that tried to eat us this morning. This little boy is the future. I owe Mulder this, and I can do this: return to Alpha Colony and spin my story. Skinner and I went for a late-night drive, rovers killed him and took me, but I escaped with William.

 

I too have loved a child enough to let her go, and Mulder stood guard over us as I did.

 

Everything ends.

 

If I'm not Walter Skinner's woman, I'll quickly be someone else's.

 

Mulder doesn't touch me and he doesn't listen. He drives, both hands on the wheel, eyes straight ahead. The boy lays with a pillow and blanket on the Humvee's rear seat, holding the tadpole's jar and making fish faces at Skippy. The toy space shuttle rests close by. Once, he's sat up to look out a window and said, "Mulder's driving," and another time, "Blueberry bread. Scully burned it." Mulder knows he's driving and what we ate for breakfast, so the boy's answering his mother. Elvis sings a cover of _Bridge over Troubled Water_ via a battery-operated cassette player, and the clouds darken as if about to smother the cool planet with an even colder gray tarp.

 

Mothra and his friends were dedicated; they buzzed and circled and scratched at the outer stable walls for ages before flying away. Leaving so late, we won't reach White Sulphur Springs tonight. We'll make the Kentucky farmhouse, and long after dark at the lackadaisical speed Mulder's driving. We'll have one more night. Four nights together in fourteen years.

 

That's not enough, yet it has to be.

 

I put a hand on my abdomen, wondering. I feel nothing except dread. Not at a pregnancy, but at returning to a life without Mulder.

 

With some coaching and a strong sedative, Prichard could manage an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. Skinner's death, especially if I'm pregnant, buys me time. I can grieve. I can keep the boy close, let him adjust. I mentally scan through the men of Alpha Colony and arrive at Captain Houston again. Houston's a good man and, once the dust settles, probably Alpha Colony's new leader.

 

If Houston's Mulder's new proxy, I should remember to call him 'Steve.'

 

The rails have fallen from the fences we pass. Vines wind up the posts and the posts wind up a hillside. A squirrel perched on an abandoned tractor watches us drive past. I see a pack of dogs across a field, running down a doe. The cassette tape reaches the end of side one, but Mulder doesn't seem to notice. The player clicks and falls silent. Mulder continues driving. The clouds begin dropping sleet.

 

A few large trees and cattle guards seem familiar. The fences and overgrown brush we passed last night are empty, overgrown hills, and dense, dim forests bisected by a maze of gravel and dirt roads. We reach the paved two-lane road back to the highway. Mulder turns onto the road but within thirty feet, pulls off at a little roadside stop atop a rise.

 

At the old service station, the rusted pumps are missing nozzles. Shards of glass remain in the front windows so the building looks like another hungry monster ready to devour us. Nearby, I see a burnt-out elementary school, a ruined little church, and an old carwash clinging to a strip of ground beside the road, with their back walls butted up against the trees. Paint flakes off the cinderblock buildings and brown leaves cover the pavement.

 

"I need you to hit me," I say as Mulder lets the engine idle.

 

Mulder's eyes cut toward me.

 

"Your son healed every scrape, every bruise. Don't sucker punch me, and don't do it in front of William, but I can't claim I escaped some murdering, raping sociopath and not have a mark on me."

 

Mulder doesn't answer.

 

"I'm serious, Mulder. They can't all be fresh marks, either. These men aren't stupid."

 

He adjusts his hands on the steering wheel.

 

"Make sure William understands to keep his abilities secret," I request.

 

Mulder nods.

 

"Tell him not to heal anyone or anything unless I tell him to."

 

Another nod, with a submissive slouch to his shoulders reminiscent of our time together as partners.

 

"This is your son, Mulder. I'm trying to cover all the bases. For you, Mulder."

 

From the backseat, the boy's little voice says, "Mulder wants you to stop talking. He has a plan."

 

I grit my teeth and address the adult man in the front seat who, last time I checked, had full command of the English language whether he liked using it or not. "Stop making him answer for you. He's a child."

 

Mulder bristles, gets as far as saying, "He's my child. Don't tell me how to raise-" and stops.

 

He sets the parking brake and leans his forehead against the steering wheel. The Humvee's engine idles loudly. Mulder's back shudders. I don't need to be psychic to know what he's thinking.

 

Touching Mulder seems unwise. Promising I'll take good care of the boy seems pointless; Mulder knows. All the token assurances - I love Mulder and he'll always be with us - Mulder is psychic. He knows.

 

"It's okay." The boy sounds certain. "Scully has my back."

 

That must be something Mulder's thought or told him. I assume Mulder's also told the boy the plan, and that we're not out for an afternoon drive. Again, I'm out of the loop.

 

The boy leans forward, offering a little fist. Mulder's shoulders rise as he inhales. His hand goes back, bumping the boy's knuckles.

 

William climbs between the seats and onto Mulder's lap. Mulder kisses his crown. He whispers in the boy's ear, "I love you. Do exactly what Scully tells you." As I take up space in the passenger seat and try to figure out what's happening, Mulder leans over and kisses me. My lips purse automatically. He looks at me with his dark, knowing eyes, and moves back. He leaves the boy sitting on the console, takes a rifle from the floorboards, and gets out of the vehicle. He closes the driver-side door.

 

Mulder steps away from the Humvee. He steps back again so he's between the old gas station and the ruined school. He continues back until he's at the edge of the trees. He stops in the shadows, barely visible. Mulder stands there, watching. He isn't stretching his legs or emptying his bladder. He's leaving. He's leaving us.

 

"Drive, Scully," the boy says.

 

Drive where? I don't understand what Mulder wants. We're a day and a half drive from Alpha Colony. The trees and broken windowpanes have eyes, giant hungry insects descend from the sky and, to use Skinner's phrase, I'm a sitting duck out here.

 

I hear a big vehicle approaching through the valley below us.

 

I stare at Mulder, who gives me an encouraging nod.

 

"Drive toward them," his son relays. "Mess up your hair, drive fast, and cry. Say you shot the man who took you."

 

"Are you kidding me, Mulder?" I ask through the closed window.

 

Three nights in fourteen years; that's not enough.

 

I scramble over the boy, assess the gearshifts and knobs and, scooting forward behind the wheel so my feet reach the pedals, look around frantically.

 

I'm certainly not driving to greet whoever's approaching on the highway, and I have no idea what's in the other direction if I flee. I don't know where I am. I see no side roads aside from the way we came. That way won't work with so little time. We're on the ridgeline; that road winds down the hillside, visible from the highway for at least a mile before it reaches the trees in the valley. On foot, with the boy, my choices are the road, the buildings, or the trees. The temperature hovers near freezing, and patches of snow dot the ground in the trees. William and I can hide in the rubble, but a pristine military Humvee parked beside a passable, two-lane highway: I might as well send up a flare.

 

A wooden door is up in a mechanic's bay of the old service station, and there's no vehicle in the bay. I see rusting tools and rotting hoses strung out. My father would be irate at the mistreated tools, but they're nothing a sturdy military vehicle can't drive over. I back the Humvee in with an inch to spare on either side of the bay door and kill the engine.

 

Inside the garage, I have room to open the driver-side door about a foot. That's all. The Humvee's too wide for me to exit through the open bay door. The other bay door is closed and blocked by a wall of tires and big tool chests. I climb on top of the Humvee and slide down the hood. Outside, I try to close the bay, but the old garage door won't come down. I try twice, jumping each time to reach the latch. I climb on the Humvee's hood. There, I can get a good grip on the latch, but I have no leverage.

 

William watches from his seat on the center console.

 

Cursing, I scramble up and over the Humvee again. Back into the dark, cramped garage bay. I get the boy out of the Humvee and consider the options. In the interest of time, I break the glass in the door to the cashier and candy area and unlock the knob. The racks of candy stand empty and the front windows of the service station are broken. Carrying William, I navigate a low, broken front window, and we're both outside.

 

And the Humvee's still a shining metal beacon in a rusting world. I jump and grab the bay door's latch again. The wood is warped, and the rollers won't budge on the rusted tracks.

 

Whoever's approaching, they're making excellent time.

 

I spend far too long trying to raise the Humvee's hood, but can't figure out how. In desperation, I tip a stack of old tires in front of the bay, push over an empty oil drum, and throw an armful of dead leaves against the Humvee's windshield.

 

The vehicles crest the hill.

 

I pick up the boy and dash to the burnt elementary school. The first doorway is a classroom - or the remains of one. The roof is largely missing. Tiny charred desks and the metal legs of little tables and chairs litter the floor. I'm afraid to venture far inside. The building's unstable rubble, but it is cover.

 

Several sets of tires stop in front of the school.

 

"Quiet," I tell William, and crouch behind a metal teacher's desk. A cracked cinderblock wall still has a skeletal chalkboard bolted to it.

 

I have my weapon, but I left my backpack in the Humvee. The boy's coat is in the Humvee. Skippy's in the Humvee. I glance down. This child's not even wearing shoes, Mulder.

 

A vehicle door opens and closes. Footsteps move across dead leaves.

 

I sneak a look from behind the desk, through the doorway. On point, I see a green Humvee with a machine gun mounted on top. Captain Houston rides shotgun in one of Alpha Colony's transport trucks.

 

Moovera, wearing a dark turtleneck sweater and fatigue pants, studies the pavement Mulder's Humvee occupied moments ago. He looks at the leaf- and litter-strewn road. He walks along the pavement to the turnoff into the trees. He crouches down. He signals Houston, who climbs down from the transport truck and zips up a coat identical to the one Mulder wears. Houston walks to Moovera, a hundred feet from the boy and me, and looking in the wrong direction.

 

The drivers stay in the vehicles. In the back of the transport truck, I spot more men from Alpha Colony, all Special Forces, all holding rifles.

 

Moovera carries two knives on his belt. A hunting knife, and a shorter, wider knife with a curved blade. A skinning knife.

 

Beneath my coat, the boy breathes hot against my neck but stays quiet. Bits of sleet drift down through the school's charred rafters and land on his brown curls. I shiver. The edge of my hand stings. I look at it. A cut bleeds onto my dirty jacket cuff and into the boy's hair.

 

Moovera keeps studying the mud beside the road, but Houston glances at the gas station and the school. I hold my breath as he walks back with a slow, long-legged stroll. I turn my head and watch through a blown-out window as Houston studies the front of Mulder's Humvee. He puts a hand on the hood. He glances inside the ransacked cashier area like he's hoping for an overlooked Snicker's bar. Back in front of the mechanic's bay, he leans over the hood to see inside the Humvee. Houston reaches up, grasps the wooden bay door with both hands, and yanks hard. The old door shrieks in protest but rolls down a few feet.

 

He leaves the service station and walks toward the elementary school. A dark knit cap covers his hair, and his tan face reddens in the cold.

 

"You said he was driving a Humvee last year?" Moovera calls, walking back.

 

"He was," Houston answers in one white breath. He steps through the doorway of the shadowed, blackened classroom. His eyes stop on the teacher's desk. I grit my teeth so they don't chatter. "But this one's empty and the hood's cold." He talks to Moovera but looks directly at us. "It's the apocalypse; he has a Humvee, we have a Humvee. Everybody has a Humvee. A nice ride: that's what impresses the ladies. Which way do the Jeep tracks go?"

 

"The tracks go north, but they're old."

 

"Maybe he's headed for Kansas City? Gonna sell her?" Houston calls back. "We can get there first."

 

"Kansas City can't afford her," is Moovera's opinion, "and Fox Mulder's driven past Ashland and Providence Colony."

 

Houston leaves the school. He pulls a highway map from his coat pocket and walks toward the transport truck. Moovera intercepts him. "What is the tread on the Humvee?"

 

Houston shrugs and unfolds the map. "Bald. It's a pile of junk. Been there for years. You really met this guy, Before?" he asks in his lazy Texas drawl. "Fox Mulder? Who's he to Dr. Scully?"

 

I stroke the boy's hair and silently remind him to stay quiet. My arms ache from holding him. My hand hurts. My nose drips. Rather than risk moving or sniffing, I let it drip.

 

"He was her partner in the FBI," Moovera says. "A man you do not want to underestimate."

 

"I think Dr. Scully's a woman you don't wanna underestimate," Houston responds, which seems to fall on deaf ears. "Was Fox Mulder her kid's father, or does the FBI frown on that sort of thing?"

 

"Five years ago, Fox Mulder was a brilliant FBI profiler," Moovera says evenly. "Now, he's killed Walter Skinner and taken Dr. Scully, and he's a dead man."

 

I shiver again, and not from the cold.

 

Moovera stands in front of the school, hands on his hips. "What do you know about the boy? You said there's a farm."

 

Houston checks his map. "I said there's a one-armed asshole who likes vodka and talks about Fox Mulder's son and a farm. I spotted a man with a little boy in a Humvee outside Kansas City; the locals said it was Fox Mulder. That's all I know," he claims, which I'm certain is a lie. The Humvee's hood isn't cold and the interior isn't empty. Houston knows I'm in the school. He knows it's Mulder's Humvee. And he knows, if Mulder wanted to hide the vehicle, Mulder could reach the garage door to pull the door down.

 

I clutch William and crouch even lower behind the desk. I pray to God the boy doesn't choose this moment to comment on a cricket or miss Skippy or marvel at my breasts.

 

Alex Krycek's name or description isn't on Byers' map in the dining hall in Alpha Colony. There's no green or yellow dot for a little boy with Mulder. Someone altered Houston's lists for Byers. Someone who didn't want me knowing Mulder had a son. Someone who thought keeping things from me equaled protecting me.

 

"Could that be the farm where Mulder stopped yesterday?" Moovera's voice asks. "Someone was there recently."

 

"Someone with a baby in diapers," Houston says. "Last year, I saw a kid four or five years old, so five or six, now. The farm's a place to spend the night, like the place in Winchester. You saw it: no food, no livestock, no garden. Nobody lives there."

 

"Where could he leave his son? Are there other farms, other people out here? Where might I find this one-armed asshole?"

 

"I thought we were rescuing Dr. Scully. Killing Fox Mulder." Houston sounds displeased. "What do you want with his kid?"

 

"The boy would be a - what is the phrase - bargaining chip? A small child is a liability. A child must be fed, cared for." Moovera speaks in his cool, seemingly friendly way, like he's discussing his golf game. "Witnessing men murdered and a woman sexually assaulted-"

 

"We don't know that. We know he drove Dr. Scully to the cabin. Probably spent the night. Made coffee, made a fire." Houston's voice grows progressively disapproving. "That's all."

 

"We know Fox Mulder didn't kill Director Skinner to take Dr. Scully as a hostage. We know Mulder doesn't want to sell her, and I doubt he wants medical treatment. Of course, he has raped her, but - the first night - brute force in his vehicle or some abandoned house wouldn't do. He's stronger, but she was an FBI agent, too. She'd fight until he beat her senseless: a split lip, a bloody nose. He didn't want that. He probably drugged her for the drive her to the cabin, but he didn't want her drugged, either. He's waited five years. He wanted her conscious and pretty, and all to himself." Moovera sounds like Mulder generating a profile, except Moovera wasn't a profiler. And Mulder never made my skin crawl. "Once they reached the cabin, he would have carried her inside. Made some bed on the floor. He tied her down before she regained consciousness. He undressed her, looked at her. Touched her. Maybe even kissed her before she could resist." I shiver again. "He built a fire, made coffee, and he waited for Dr. Scully to wake up. In his mind, it's a romantic weekend reunion in the woods, except for the screaming and struggling. But no one can hear her. Fox Mulder took her to the cabin so he had all the time he wanted to do whatever he wanted. Do you think he wanted to chat?"

 

I don't hear Houston comment.

 

Still sounding nonplussed, Moovera continues. "Witnessing murder and rape is frightening, to a child. The boy would cry or run away, even from his own father. Fox Mulder can't manage Dr. Scully and his son, and we know he has Dr. Scully. We know he has hurt Dr. Scully. He may have the Missouri woman, too. That means he has left the boy somewhere."

 

I steal another look. The men watch each other, not the school. Houston squares his shoulders. He's tall, with an inch and twenty pounds on Moovera. Ten years younger. "I'm not helping you kidnap a kid." Houston's accent all but vanishes. "Neither are my men. Neither will Brewster's men. We're soldiers. We aren't monsters."

 

"He killed my friend. I will find him." Moovera's friendly demeanor falls away, leaving cold, calculating rage. But, as if to demonstrate he once took a correspondence course in right versus wrong, he adds, "Mrs. North needs a doctor. When I find the sister, that girl may need a doctor, as well. We must find Fox Mulder and rescue Dr. Scully by any means necessary."

 

"Not if it means kidnapping a child."

 

Moovera looks at Houston a long time with his dark, unblinking eyes. Houston stares back until Moovera looks away. Houston's posture relaxes, which is a mistake in my opinion. A military captain leads, but an assassin doesn't need to be top dog. Moovera may plan to leave the group and find William on his own. He may plan to kill Houston. Either way, Moovera isn't backing down. He's merely not engaging.

 

"You said he's headed north." Houston reverts to his usual we-have-all-day Texas drawl. He folds up his map. "There's a place down the road. A place he stays, sometimes. Let's go find Fox Mulder and bring home the pretty lady doctor while there's still somethin' pretty left to bring home."

 

Moovera looks at the service station bay again. At the broken glass in the door between the cashier and the mechanic area. His gaze stops at the fallen leaves outside the classroom doorway.

 

"There's nothin' there," Houston calls, and climbs into the transport truck. "Let's go."

 

Quiet, quiet, quiet, I think to the boy.

 

As Moovera turns away, a little rock falls through the charred rafters and lands in the center of the classroom.

 

Bone cutters, Mulder, I think loudly. After your pinkies, I'll work my way through your little piggies in a manner that will make Ahsan Moovera proud to know me.

 

Moovera steps through the classroom doorway. From behind the desk, I feel his gaze: those patient, methodical eyes that miss nothing. Any footprint or disturbance in the dust and debris, or any smudge in the soot. The white clouds our breath makes in the cold air.

 

"Make him not see us," I mouth to William, though I don't know if that's possible.

 

I hear Moovera inhale. He stops walking. A few seconds of silence pass. I hear footsteps moving away. I chance a glance. Moovera's outside the school with one hand on his hip and one on his forehead, seeming distracted.

 

"Are you composin' a sonnet?" Houston yells from the truck. "What the hell are you doing? Let's move!"

 

Moovera shakes his head. "Yes. Okay. Yes. The school's clear."

 

"I told you that."

 

Moovera catches a ride on the transport truck's running board, and the convoy moves on. The men turn off the two-lane road and follow the gravel road down the hillside toward Mulder's cabin. Once the sound of the engines and tires fade, I stand up. I shift the boy to my hip and make my way out of the burned classroom.

 

Mulder's waiting outside the old service station.

 

"That wasn't chance, was it?" I pass Mulder his son. My hand's stopped bleeding, but I'm freezing and sore and soot-smudged. "You've listened to them approach all morning."

 

Mulder takes off his jacket and uses it to cover William.

 

This is ludicrous. I'm risking all our lives. I just let eight armed men in military vehicles drive away. Eight men who would have protected me, not raped me or sold me to the highest bidder. The boy and I could have hidden in the back of that transport truck all the way to Alpha Colony, and anyone we passed would assume Houston had a load of dry goods or sheet metal or solar panels.

 

One shot. One loud yell, even. They'd return in minutes.

 

Everything ends, and this is as good an ending as any.

 

"Tomorrow." I wipe my nose on my dirty sleeve. Tomorrow, Mulder can let them find me. Me and the boy. Tomorrow, I'll go back to Alpha Colony.

 

Humans have four basic blood types, and four nucleobase types of DNA. In all likelihood, those giant, hungry insects had four wings, and Moovera and Houston had four armed men in the back of their truck. Four seems a sufficient number.

 

Four nights in fourteen years, provided I don't get all three of us killed. I tell myself that's enough.

 

                    ***

 

Skinner and I were derelict in our duties, and drunk - or at least drinking - on the clock. In the bunker. In the morning. With Lynn still occupying a bed in the clinic and three-fourths of her husbands lounging about.

 

Sleeping with the Director had its privileges.

 

From his breathing, Skinner wasn't sound asleep, but he dozed, so I remained still. I looked around my bedroom: at my holstered weapon on the dresser, at our clothes and towels strewn on the cement floor. The half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. At the book on home-grown medicine I'd left out, and which Skinner must have perused on the sly. I had bacteria culturing in Petri dishes in my lab; there ended my horticultural competence.

 

Skinner's hand moved toward me. He pushed down the thick blankets. Lightly, lazily, he trailed his fingers down my shoulder, over the peak of my breast, and down my abdomen. His hand stopped at my mons Venus, toying with the soft, curly auburn hair. I turned my head. He was watching me. He had such warm, kind eyes for a man who wielded so much powder and who'd witnessed such horrors.

 

"Are you leading Alpha Colony today, or just enjoying the consensual fringe benefits?" I stumbled over the /s/ in 'consensual.'

 

"You're still drunk," he said. "Two drinks, Dana. How are you Irish?"

 

I said, "Two big drinks. I am barely inebriated," though my nose remained numb. Walter Skinner had the advantage of a hundred pounds and a significant amount of muscle mass. If Skinner poured, he ended up relaxed and I ended up on my back. Or on him. Or, several times, against the wall in a shower stall. My former boss considered sexual intercourse an athletic event, and everyone crossed the finish line happy.

 

As he touched me, chill bumps rose on my skin and my nipples hardened in the cool air. Skinner moved his fingers in a circle, curling my pubic hair around them. He'd scraped his knuckles recently, probably working on the generators. I saw a fresh bruise in his forearm.

 

"You are a beautiful woman."

 

My body still hummed, my hair remained damp, and the room rocked pleasantly. I shifted against the pillows. "Thank you."

 

"Especially your hairy legs."

 

I glanced down. "Go to Hell. There was an alien apocalypse."

 

His fingers moved lower. "Turn over, hun."

 

"No sir. I am not that inebriated, sir."

 

He chuckled. "Neither am I. Not by a long shot. I just want to see you."

 

I sighed but obliged.

 

His hand stroked my buttocks, my tattoo. Up my back, pushing my long hair aside. His gentleness still surprised me. I thought of him as strong, competent, honorable and commanding. A good lover. A good leader. A good friend. But something more than a human being.

 

"Did Mulder ever get to do this? Just look at you?"

 

"No. Not really." Not while I was conscious, anyway.

 

"If he wants to," Skinner said, "tell him he can. I feel him in my head, sometimes, but just for a few seconds. If he listens to you, tell him. To see you, feel your skin. Nothing more. On my time, not his."

 

His offer also surprised me. Skinner had been adamant he acted as Mulder's proxy so I could touch Mulder. Up until that morning, he hadn't given a damn if Mulder wanted to touch me.

 

A long moment passed while his hand continued feather-light caresses over my bare skin. "Is Mulder listening now?"

 

"No." All the haze in my head was whisky and post-orgasmic dopamine.

 

"How long did you and Mulder try to get pregnant?"

 

I turned to look at him. His question seemed overly personal, despite his DNA inside my body and the distinct, feminine smell clinging to his face.

 

"I was your boss. I owned a phone book. You and Mulder both turned in work excuses from a fertility clinic." Skinner seemed unconcerned. "How long?"

 

"About six months."

 

"It's a new phrase," Skinner said, still stroking. "Modern. Helena used it. She and my idiot brother-in-law were seeing a specialist. 'We're trying to get pregnant' and 'We are pregnant.' Both of them, though in reality she's pregnant and he's drunk at the country club."

 

"It sounds like your sister really did it the old-fashioned way." I pushed my arms beneath the pillow. "Language drives social norms. Women are no longer considered their husbands' property. Modern fathers are present. Couples share more equally in child-rearing. A plural pronoun makes sense. Made sense, I guess," I amended. "Before."

 

Skinner moved closer, kissing my shoulder blade. "Do you know the problem with women in military combat?"

 

"I know you're about to tell me your antiquated theory and ignore any rational argument to the contrary."

 

He flicked my earlobe with his fingertip. "The male instinct to protect females. No soldier will focus on his mission while the enemy threatens a woman he loves. The modern phrase, 'we're pregnant'? I'm not pregnant. She's pregnant, and it's my job to protect her at any cost. It's always my job to protect her. That's how it works. That's what I promised."

 

I pushed up on my elbows. "Neither 'I' nor 'we' are pregnant. You don't let me outside this bunker without an armed guard, let alone anywhere near a fire-fight. Is this testosterone and the Johnnie Walker talking, or is there a subtext? Is this about Sharon? Or Mulder?" I guessed. "The Missouri people have seen Mulder."

     

"You told me," he mumbled, and laid back. He closed his eyes and gave every appearance of wanting to sleep. In all likelihood, he only wanted to avoid answering me.

 

I focused on his face a moment before I gave up and got up. I let the floor stop swaying, and got my long johns and clothes on. I brushed out and pulled back my damp hair. As I sat on the edge of the bed to put on my Nikes, Skinner asked, "Are you happy, Dana?"

 

"Am I happy?"

 

"You're safe. You're protected. You can have anything you want that still exists - except a baby, I guess. Are you happy?" Seconds passed. "Sharon wasn't happy."

 

I held my shoes rather than put them on. "You can't know that."

 

"She filed for divorce three times. That's pretty damn unhappy." He paused again. "She said I didn't talk to her. I talked to her. I didn't tell her things that would only hurt her. I tried to protect her."

 

I looked back. He'd opened his brown eyes.

 

"You're a good man. Any woman would be fortunate to have you love her."

 

He propped his head on his fist. His glasses remained on my nightstand, so he squinted. "That's what women write in 'Dear John' letters, Dana. Are you happy?"

 

"I have a patient." I started on my shoes again. The laces seemed unusually tricky. I was far too old to develop Wilson's disease, and mercury poisoning was unlikely, so I blamed the second drink Skinner poured me. "I thought we covered this in July."

 

The bed shifted as he lay down again.

 

I jerked clumsily at my laces. "Unless you want the men sniffing you all day long, you might want to shower again. I recommend consuming some fluids, and I'll patch up your knuckles before you go back to work."

 

"Can you stay a few minutes?"

 

"I have a patient," I repeated, as if he didn't know. "You said you want her in and out."

 

"You're intoxicated, and you have a competent male nurse." He stroked my shoulder. "Stay. Please. I know you don't love me. Stay a few minutes."

 

I don't know why I did it. What in his voice touched a nerve and made me act sensibly, but I did. I took off the shoes I just put on and, fully dressed, lay down. I let Walter Skinner curl up behind me and put his arms around me. Sleep.

 

An hour later, after I slipped away, his hand remained on the mattress where I'd been. Like Houston, Skinner still wore a wedding band. A scratched, dull, gold band. Twenty-five years.

 

I hadn't known.

 

In the executive bathroom, after I emptied my bladder and rinsed off, I had taken a moment to shave my legs.

 

                    ***

 

In continued news from How to Survive the End of the World, Mulder and his son have found a swing. It's not food and shelter. It's not safety. It's certainly not warmth. It is about fifty feet from the Humvee, behind the burned school and apparently, hours of fun for the Mulder family.

 

Vines climb the poles of the swing set, and a deep mat of dead, wet leaves covers the ground. The slide is a Tower to Tetanus. A wooden merry-go-round has rotted through, but a single swing remains intact.

 

The rusted chains squeak against the hooks. The old rubber seat creaks. The boy's breath makes white clouds each time the swing crests. Minutes crawl past as Mulder pushes the swing, and the boy smiles and laughs.

 

A shot echoes from a valley below us, so distant the sound's barely audible. Two pops follow. Probably flashbang grenades.

 

"They've found the stable," I tell Mulder, and think of all those supplies. All the food. The photographs. The wine. Mulder probably had the only hot shower outside of Alpha Colony.

 

Mulder keeps pushing the swing. He's put shoes and a coat on the boy. We have a vehicle. Maybe finding food and shelter is simple if Mulder can read the minds of the people who have it, kill them, and take it.

 

Another faint gunshot echoes. I understand flashbang grenades if they think we're in the stable, but God knows what the men are shooting. Maybe those giant insects. Or each other.

 

Mulder keeps pushing.

 

I stand at the edge of the playground, arms crossed, hands tucked beneath my armpits. "They'll come back, Mulder. If it keeps snowing, they can follow our tire tracks. The temperature's falling. What are we still doing here?"

 

"Mulder says 'Climb the slide, Scully,'" the boy relays, with his little hands holding the chains tightly.

 

"Mulder can speak for himself," I tell the pusher, not the pushee.

 

Mulder clears his throat. "Climb the slide, Scully. I want you to see something."

 

I look at the old slide. It perches on spindly legs like a rusting Daddy Longlegs, with the top higher than any allowed in a modern school. "You want me to see what it's like to die of complications from a compound fracture?"

 

Mulder gives William another push before gesturing to the slide's metal rungs. The metal's wet. The slide's ladder doesn't even have handrails.

 

"Are you kidding me, Mulder?"

 

He points up. I roll my eyes, but of course it wouldn't matter if the slide was Mount Everest. I start up it.

 

"What am I looking for?" With my hands on the top rung, I see down into the burned school building and over the service station, the church, and the carwash. I see across the two-lane road. Beyond that, orange and red and yellow treetops block the view. I brave another rung. Another. The view remains unremarkable.

 

"Mulder says-" the boy starts, but Mulder finishes, "You're too short. Stand on top."

 

I step up the last two slippery rungs. I shift from the ladder to the slide and get my feet under me. Keeping a death grip on the shaky handrails at the top of the slide, I - in direct contradiction to universal playground rules and basic common sense - straighten my legs. The slide wobbles side-to-side, designed for a small child's weight rather than an adult's. "Good news: the gravitational constant remains intact," I report, still holding on. "Mulder, all I need is a little umbrella and a clown hat. I can quit medicine and join Cirque du Soleil."

 

Mulder points upward.

 

"You're not serious, Mulder. Are you serious?"

 

He repeats the gesture.

 

With my feet apart for balance and flat on the eighteen square inches of metal - rusted, wet, Eisenhower-era metal - and at a rate a sloth could beat, I let go of one, then both handrails. I straighten up. Wind blows my hair and sleet stings my cheeks. "Do you think Ahsan Moovera's scope and those giant insects have a clear view of me now, or should I send up a flare?"

 

The gravel road disappears into the forest and, miles away, two smudges on a rise might be the farmhouse and the stable. I see the two-lane paved road along the ridgeline. There's an interstate highway to the east and some low buildings. The other direction holds a broad valley of charred rubble. No structures remain in the valley, and no trees. Nothing remains. No roads or fields or foundations. Only a miles-wide field of burnt, twisted debris. The surrounding trees are flattened outward and charred, like the trees in photos of the Tunguska event.

 

"Was it a bomb?" I ask, but that's impossible. A nuclear bomb leaves a radioactive hot zone. I don't have a Geiger counter on me, but Mulder isn't sick. William, at forty-five pounds, would be most vulnerable to radiation sickness; he's healthy. The flora and fauna thrive. "What made this?"

 

Mulder holds his index fingers to his temples and wiggles them like alien deely-boppers.

 

I study the rubble again. It's an even depth, and all the same blackened metal. The debris forms a circle. Not a rough circle between the hills: a perfect circle. I touch the little bump beneath the skin on the back of my neck as alarm sounds in my amygdala.

 

It's a ship.

 

It was a ship. One of the colonist's ships crashed in the valley. We probably passed it last night in the darkness. My respirations quicken along with my heartbeat. For a few seconds, my visual field narrows and the forest sounds fade. My muscles tremble as the fight or flight response tries to overtake me, to protect me.

 

I watch the debris, expecting the pieces to reform and rise.

 

They don't.

 

They won't. This spaceship won't ever summon me, and the alien creatures in it won't hurt me.

 

The handful of Marines in Alpha Colony vaccinated Before - who witnessed colonization rather than hid - saw dozens of ships. They talk of vast swarms of bees and ships blocking out the sun. As Purity spread, they saw beams of light sweep across cities, collecting thousands of infected humans at once until, like Leo and Joe said, no one remained for the soldiers to protect.

 

Those spaceships left, but this circular field of burnt rubble is never going anywhere. I feel a deep satisfaction as I look at it, as I felt as I stood over Donnie Pfaster's dead body and knew he'd never hurt anyone again.

 

Below me, the boy sits in a motionless swing, and Mulder's eyes track me. Mulder doesn't speak. He doesn't even listen. He waits.

 

The size of the wreckage defies comprehension. The technology necessary to power such a craft defies science. The spaceship's bigger than a dozen stadiums or speedways. For that craft to travel the immense distance between stars, piloted by creatures composed of elements on our periodic table and adhering to our laws of physics, isn't possible. Yet the ship's there.

 

And it's rubble. Scrap. Twisted, useless, charred wreckage. In the end, that's all that matters. Debating the science is like arguing about the chip in my neck. In the end, all that matters is I'm not dead.

 

Another little light blinks deep in my brain. A realization. Mulder's not showing me the crashed ship as a curiosity. 

 

"Are you responsible for this?" I call down.

 

Mulder nods. I see a hint of a smile.

 

"Marita helped," William chimes in.

 

"Marita helped," Mulder amends.

 

"So Marita got punished along with you."

 

The smile fades. Mulder nods again.

 

Mulder sabotaged one of their ships. Of course he did. Fox Mulder spent a lifetime choosing his crusade for truth over his own comfort and safety, and his fight for humanity's future over complacency. He may retreat and regroup, but his vocabulary lacks the word 'surrender.'

 

I look at the wreckage one last time.

 

I don't want to surrender either, but beyond the valley are more hills. They roll into the distance and fold into an autumnal blur beneath snow clouds. Winter's coming. Another long, cold winter, if the mild summer's any prediction. Alpha Colony got crops to ripen in the short summer, but barely. Soon the last of the canned and boxed food from Before will spoil. In the colonies, fuel is scarce. Medications will lose their potency. Rubber, explosives, adhesives: all have shelf-lives. The things we don't use up will eventually break down, but the hot zones will remain for decades.

 

No cars move on the distant roads. I see no electric lights. I hear no sounds except Earth abiding without us, and the creak of the swing as Mulder resumes pushing William. I think of Byers' map again: miles and miles of nothing dotted with monsters and rovers and an infinite number of ways to die.

 

There must be something out there. Some form of life. The slide wobbles as my hand goes to the base of my throat, but my cross necklace hasn't magically reappeared. It's gone, like our world is gone.

 

My hands hold the railings again, and I see him as my foot reaches the top step. No sound drew my attention to the trees across the playground. No movement in the forest caught my eye. Perhaps it's women's intuition, perhaps it's chance, but I spot him. A tall, athletic man in a camouflage jacket stands in the shadows. Silent. Unmoving. He watches me with his startlingly bright green eyes. The cold reddens his cheeks, and a dark knit cap covers most of his blond hair.

 

Houston has a rifle.

 

Mulder's pushing a swing.

 

William's in the line of fire.

 

The swing set's old hooks and chains groan as William arcs higher and higher. Mulder's son kicks his feet and holds on for dear life. He laughs the jubilant, innocent laugh of childhood.

 

If Mulder senses Houston and reaches for a weapon, Houston's rifle can put thirty rounds into Mulder in seconds. At this range, flirtatious, easy-going Captain Houston can put those rounds through Mulder. With William between them.

 

I ease down the slide's cold metal rungs.

 

From the shadows, Houston watches. I don't know how long he's been there or what he's heard, but even cold and sooty, even claiming Stockholm syndrome, I'm the least-convincing hostage in history.

 

It doesn't matter. Houston thinks I killed Skinner; I'm certain of it. I'm also certain Houston doesn't give a damn. In fact, I wonder if the second gunshot earlier was Houston taking out Ahsan Moovera.

 

"I'm swinging high," William says, probably checking in with his mother. "Scully talks a lot."

 

Dead leaves rustle. Rusted chains creak. A mix of snowflakes and sleet drift down. My breath makes white clouds, and my hands ache from cold. My feet reach the wet leaves and take root there.

 

No other men appear in the shadows. Houston's so still I don't know how he's breathing. With one bare hand, he points at the boy, and to me.

 

With the slightest possible move of my chin, I nod. Yes, this is my son. I thought Mulder and our baby died during colonization, like Houston's wife and daughter died. Like everyone died. All these years, I didn't know they'd survived. Skinner kept it from me. Don't hurt the boy. Please God, don't hurt his father.

 

White vapor leaves Houston's nose. He gives me an approving grin.

 

I inhale. Cold air stings my throat and lungs. "Mulder, we need to go. They'll come back."

 

"We're busy," the boy relays, as his father gives him another big push. "We're swinging, Scully."

 

"Now, Mulder."

 

From the shadowy trees, Houston holds up three bare fingers.

 

I stare at him.

 

If he's alone, Houston has a rifle. I have Mulder's vehicle, which I personally packed with something more than sunflower seeds and porn. I see straps on Houston's shoulders, so he has his pack, with more food and water and weapons and maps. He'll take William and me anywhere we want to go. No strings attached. If Houston's killed Moovera, Houston has the green Humvee, the transport truck, and all those soldiers. He's Alpha Colony's new leader, if he wants the job. Either way, I bet Houston can push a swing and throw a baseball and catch lizards. I bet Houston can even change a diaper, a task I've never attempted.

 

Houston's three fingers remain raised.

 

'Steve' is a nice name. Steve has warm hands and a charming smile. He's kind and competent and bright and funny. He likes Harry Potter. He's killed generals and politicians on three continents but, unlike Mulder, he's unlikely to try to kill me.

 

After the world ended, Skinner said we either live or we die; that simplifies our choices. I want to live. I want Mulder to live. I want this child - this hope for humanity - to live. If I can bear a child of my own, I want him to grow up somewhere safe. Somewhere with laws and a school and Fourth of July fireworks. Somewhere, if my sons meet a nice girl, it's not acceptable to kill the men she's with and take her.

 

I know what I've promised, and what I need to do.

 

But I shake my head. It's a brief left-to-right movement. Darwin postulated the gesture arose from infants declining food. From America to China, from Guinea to Brazil, the traverse movement of the human head holds the same meaning.

 

No.

 

Soundlessly, Houston lowers his hand and steps back. Shadows and trees remain where he stood. He vanishes so easily he could have never been present at all.

 

"Now, Mulder." Mulder doesn't listen. Mulder never listens. I walk over, grab a chain, and stop the swing. "We're going. We need to go. Right now. Let's go."

 

Mulder doesn't listen psychically, but he does cooperate. He carries William around the ruined buildings and back to the pavement. I scan the tree line past the service station and beyond the school. I glance up and down the empty two-lane road. The gray strip stretches from horizon to horizon, linking nothing to nothing.

 

William plays near the rusting gas pumps as Mulder shoves the mechanic's bay door up. I get to crawl over it, maneuver through the dark garage, and squeeze into the Humvee. The military vehicle has an ignition switch, not a key. I push the lever to 'start' and the engine turns over. I wedge William's pillow behind my back so my feet reach the pedals.

 

Mulder clears the old tires and empty oil drum out of the way. I let the Humvee inch forward, out of the garage. In the back seat, Skippy sloshes in his jar as I drive over some mechanic's abandoned jack and impact wrench. Mulder checks each side of the vehicle. The wide Humvee clears the entrance, but with so little room to spare I hold my breath as I ease out.

 

I roll down the window. "Get in." Mulder's masculinity will survive me driving, but I see a smirk at the pillow behind me.

 

While Mulder settles the boy in the back, I flip through the box of cassette tapes. I get lucky. Mulder's assembled every Elvis Presley recording known to man, but the Humvee's previous owner liked mid-90's female vocals. I find Tracy Chapman, Alanis Morissette. Sheryl Crow. Melissa Etheridge. This is angry, desperate, soul-wrenching music I can drive to.

 

My former partner climbs into the passenger seat. I put the Humvee in gear and press the 'play' button. Mulder's making progress with the facial expressions. At the first notes of Tracy Chapman's _Heaven's Here on Earth_ , his eyebrows ask, 'What fresh Hell is this?'

 

At the edge of the road, I stop to look both ways for traffic. Mulder smirks again.

 

I glance in the rearview mirror.

 

In the weedy walkway between the gas station and the school - where Mulder hid earlier - I see Houston again. His rifle hangs across his chest. He stands casually, leaning his shoulder against the school's sooty brick wall, with his hands tucked beneath his armpits. Watching. 

 

Bare branches reach for the gray sky. Snowflakes drift down on the windshield and pavement. The Humvee idles loudly. Mulder's son holds his tadpole, and Mulder's in the passenger seat. My Mulder. My guy.

 

Three nights in twelve years.

 

I try. I contemplate the Land of Reason one final time, but I can't go back there.

 

Four nights with Mulder. Five, even: it's still not enough. From the day I walked into Mulder's basement office to the day he walked out of the Greenbrier Bunker was one-fifth of my life. One-fifth. That's an impossibly small fraction, and it's not enough. I want more.

 

I want sexual innuendos and bad puns and sunflower seed shells left in random little piles. I want the driver's seat adjusted as far back as it will go. I want to listen to sports trivia and a basketball bounce, bounce, bounce until I consider putting a bullet in the damn ball. I want no sense of direction, but the gall to argue with me and the map. I want intuitive leaps and childlike wonder combined with a complete disregard for rules, science, comfort, and practicality. I want a man who'll charter a flight to Antarctica and put his life on the line for mine and kill for me, no questions asked.

 

I want Mulder looking down my blouse and watching my back and assuming all the unpleasant details - like our biological requirement for sustenance, safety, shelter, and warmth - are my prerogative. I want to wait ages, amusing William and thinking entirely wholesome thoughts, while Mulder investigates glowing yellow eyes or chats with Bat Boy. I want the scent of Mulder's skin on mine each morning, and to open my eyes to check he's sleeping beside me at night. I don't care if he infuriates me. I don't care if the Brown Chicken Brown Cow with Marita continued after William's conception. I don't care if Mulder - for reasons best left unexamined - likes to listen to my sensations as I pee. I don't care if he's not a nice guy. Fox Mulder's my guy and spending one-fifth of my life with him isn't enough.

 

I take my foot off the Humvee's brake pedal. In my rearview mirror, Houston's reflection gives me a farewell salute.

 

"The first men from Alpha Colony we encounter, you get out," I tell Mulder. "Hide. I'll let them find William and me. I'll mess up my hair and cry and say I shot the man who took me. I promise."

 

At least a square millimeter of muscle moves on Mulder's face, indicating he's perplexed. That was his plan an hour ago.

 

I ease the Humvee onto the road, headed west. Autumn leaves swirl away from the big tires, into the air, and scatter back onto the pavement behind us. The snow still melts as it reaches the ground, but the temperature's dropping. Another few degrees and Mother Nature will cover our tracks. Though I don't think anyone will follow.

 

"Mulder says you're going the wrong way," the boy says from the backseat.

 

"Mulder needs to speak for himself," I respond curtly.

 

My former-partner obliges. Mulder clears his throat and says over Tracy Chapman's voice, "Go left. I know a place to spend the night. Unless you're making a house call for Lynn, this way is about fifteen-hundred miles of nothing."

 

"Shut up, Mulder." I reach down, grab a rifle, and hand it to my copilot so he's prepared for the monsters. "I know where I'm going."

 

I don't. I have no idea. Even so, Amen.

 

The Humvee's engine hums. The tires pick up speed, taking us away from any safe haven, away from complacency, and into the dangerous unknown. Into the land of black dots and hope. Hope there's something out there. Maybe some Y2K prepper's cabin high in the Rocky Mountains. Maybe a colony on the West Coast that doesn't know Mulder. Maybe some chance at a normal life.

 

As we crest the next hill, Mulder worries his lips. He's tip-toed through my thoughts. Glanced over his shoulder at the distant service station and furrowed his brow. I'm pretty sure he's on to me - and Houston - but rather than insist I turn around, he asks, "Are you real?"

 

"Oh my God, Mulder." I exhale forcefully. "Again? Is this part of your daily routine? Can't you just floss and do some calisthenics every morning?"

 

Clearly not. I feel more pressure behind my forehead. He extends a finger and pokes my shoulder.

 

I look away from the road long enough to poke him back.

 

Having satisfied I'm a corporeal mass, he moves to question number two. "Are you really Dana Scully?"

 

"Of course, I'm really Dana Scully. You're listening to my thoughts. You're riding in a vehicle I'm driving. I just handed you a rifle, and I'm driving, Mulder. I'm driving on an abandoned road in an empty world full of innumerable threats with you riding shotgun and your son in the back. Logically, who do you think I am? Some post-apocalyptic shape-shifting good-Samaritan chauffeur? Am I real? Are you kidding me? Descartes didn't spend this much time proving his own existence."

 

Mulder studies me. He tilts his head thoughtfully.

 

I sigh. After a few seconds of consideration, I take his hand. "Can William see me? Listen to the boy. If William hears me and sees me just as you do, I'm real."

 

We'll use a psychic version of Occam's Razor. If Mulder can't believe his own eyes, he can believe his son's eyes. Simple, reliable, perfect - until I check the rearview mirror. William's busy making faces at the tadpole.

 

"I'm real. I'm Scully." Before Mulder starts pinching me and grabbing my breast, I rattle off, "3.14159265359. Either measure anything circular and check my math or trust me."

 

I can recite the first ten digits of the Fibonacci series, Euler's number, and Pythagoras's constant. That should get us across Missouri and most of Kansas.

 

Mulder doesn't bother measuring or calculating anything. He puts the rifle butt on his thigh, holds the barrel, and watches out the window as I drive. He's still listening but he focuses on the horizon. We have a full tank, plus twenty gallons of fuel, three days' food, six gallons of water, seven boxes of ammunition, my backpack, the pack Mulder keeps for William, three sleeping bags, the June 1999 edition of _Hustler_ , and a resurrected tadpole. My mother would be pleased; everyone's eaten breakfast, has a jacket, and wears clean underwear. I'm certain my queasiness is purely somatic at this point.

 

As I drive, one corner of Mulder's mouth twists into a grin. He gives my hand a squeeze. After all these years, I still get butterflies. Snow falls, William talks to - or possibly with - his tadpole, Mulder holds a fully-automatic rifle, and the old state highway stretches ahead of us, stick-straight until it vanishes into nothing.

 

                    ***

 

I remembered the case that went with the heels and cranberry-colored suit in Mulder's photo. The newspaper photograph of me he'd tacked up beside his pictures of William. The pantsuit and those block-heeled black pumps investigated the Peacock family in Home, Pennsylvania. October, 1996. Twelve years and a lifetime ago.

 

The heels had been brand new, and I'd ruined them. And gotten mud and pig manure all over the cranberry suit. In addition to lacking cellular phone service, a morgue, and cable television, Home lacked a dry cleaner. I wore a navy blue suit the day we arrived in Home, and I wore it again the day Mulder and I left.

 

The Peacock children - three out of four of them - got buried in a pauper's cemetery outside the churchyard and within sight of their old house. The church, the dilapidated Peacock place, and the makeshift baseball field formed a big triangle. Sheriff Taylor and his wife's graves had been dug. Bright green pieces of AstroTurf covered neighboring mounds of fresh dirt, and tented rows of chairs waited graveside. The funeral service would be Monday. There would be no viewing, understandably.

 

Mulder wore his gray suit pants and black shoes again, suggesting he shared my pig manure/dry cleaning problem. We'd filed our paperwork with the local PD and checked out of the town's lone motel. The October sun sank low behind the empty fields, and a five-hour drive in a Bureau sedan awaited us. Mulder had our car keys in his pants pocket.

 

I stood on the church steps, waiting, as Mulder walked from one grave to the next, studying them. The Peacock graves had no markers, only numbered metal signs at the foot of two big mounds of dirt and one small mound.

 

I thought I had my partner's number, back then. Fox Mulder, the talented, self-destructive, privileged son who both scorned and took privilege for granted. Who slept on his sofa and wore thousand-dollar suits and chased conspiracies and shadows, trying to find the missing sister he'd disappointed his parents by failing to save.

 

Mulder didn't fail to save the poor Peacock child; the child was dead when we arrived, at its own parents' hands. A community mourned but no murderer awaited trial. Mrs. Peacock and her oldest son remained missing. We hadn't decreased the body count or brought anyone or anything to justice. We just waded through shit.

 

Mulder continued roaming the cemetery like he might find some clue that made the atrocities make sense. Closure, therapists said. Something to gave closure to this awful case before we boarded another flight or checked into another modest motel with our Bureau credit cards. On and on, an endless blur of fleet sedans and autopsies and ER's as our normal lives fell away and the ethereal truth remained beyond our grasp. I thought my job exhausted me. Gave me headaches. In reality, a little bundle of malignant cells deep in my sinus cavity began to multiply and would make themselves known in a matter of months.

 

"Mulder, it's getting late," I called from the church steps. "We need to go. What are you doing?"

 

I got - as I often did - no response.

 

Risking another pair of high heels, I walked across the graveyard to join Mulder at the smallest grave. The autumn leaves rustled. The cool breeze blew my hair back and Mulder's tie over his shoulder.

 

"You think they'll come back?" The sheriff's roadblocks hadn't caught Mrs. Peacock and her oldest son. "Do you think we should wait?"

 

Mulder shook his head. "I'm thinking about them; I'm not thinking they'll come back."

 

"These people were monsters, Mulder. Monsters begetting more monsters."

 

Mulder glanced at the Peacock's abandoned house and looked down at the little patch of freshly-turned earth. "This was a parent trying to protect her children. A family holding onto a dying way of life. People trying to survive in a world that's changed."

 

I put my hands on my hips. "That's a unique viewpoint. The modern world would view them as guilty of incest, homicide, and infanticide."

 

Mulder's mother had suffered a stroke, and his latest informant was murdered. Mulder claimed he found and lost a mute, juvenile clone of his sister, and Jeremiah Smith could heal people like a modern-day Christ; I'd tired of arguing with Mulder about the scientific impossibility of either claim. Mulder's Big Blue alligator ate my poor dog. I, under the influence of some still-unexplained electronic device that produced paranoia, almost shot Mulder, and under Robert Modell's influence, Mulder almost shot me. Our year wasn't going well, and I had the hospital visits, dry cleaning bills, and memos from Assistant Director Skinner to prove it.

 

I did concede, "Mrs. Peacock said we'd understand if we had children."

 

"Would we?" Mulder turned toward me and squinted into the setting sun. "What do you think we'd be like as parents?"

 

"We? As in you and I each contributing twenty-three chromosomes to the same miniature Homo sapien? Are you presuming mind control or a large amount of tequila?"

 

"You don't have to get me drunk, Scully." His gaze shifted to my blouse. "You just have to wear thin shirts in breezy autumn weather, and ask nicely, using big, big doctor words." He worried his lips. "Maybe get me a little drunk."

 

I pulled my navy blue blazer closed. "You're dreaming, partner."

 

"You don't know what I dream, Agent Scully." He watched me with those lazy hazel eyes that held a million secrets.

 

For a second, that pretty autumn dusk, getting Fox Mulder a little drunk and asking nicely didn't seem an entirely bad idea. Only a generally ill-advised one. Mulder was handsome in a tall, lean, angular way. My mother liked that Mulder washed his hands after using the restroom, wore nice suits, and kept his hair short. Apparently, Mom wanted tall, slim, dark-haired grandchildren with genius IQ's, poor impulse control, and a bad case of self-serving paranoia - but excellent personal hygiene.

 

"Maybe, if I settled down, I wouldn't want a family with you, Scully." Mulder stood facing me, about two inches inside my personal space. "I hear motherhood involves more than having seen _Babe_ nineteen times, being able to start an IV with a twenty-four gauge needle, and knowing 'dermatoglyphics' - the study of fingerprints - is the longest word in the English language with no repeated letters."

 

"I said it's one of the longest words with no repeated letters. I never said it's the longest." Confident of my Aunt Dana pizza-ordering, VHS-rewinding skills, I told Mulder, "Your contribution to paternity would be that spotless genetic make-up, bedtime stories entitled _A is for Alien Implant_ , and thinking every school project requires a lengthy slide show."

 

He tilted his head as if considering on a deep, philosophical level. "Yes, but which of us tans, can sink a basket and reach the top of the refrigerator, and has a team in the World Series?"

 

For a man who twitched when the cable television went out and seemed as close to settling down as the average grunion, Mulder still wouldn't leave. I walked toward the car, hoping he'd follow in order to argue with me. It worked. Mulder followed me all the way to the church parking lot but stopped to lean back against the fleet sedan's dusty hood.

 

I checked my clearance-rack designer heels for damage. I found none, but my back hurt and my feet pleaded for relief.

 

"I think you'd be a good mother," Mulder said as he dawdled. "If you ever decide to settle down. Aside from knee-jerk skepticism and thinking the fastest way to a man's heart is a Y-incision followed by good pair of bone cutters, I think you'd be great."

 

Resigning myself, I leaned back on the hood beside him. "If I ever decide to settle down? Where am I right now, Mulder? In the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night, with pig manure on my new shoes," I answered for him. "With you. Where do you think a relationship, let alone a baby, fits into my life?"

 

To hell with propriety and my pantyhose. I took off my shoes and let my feet rest flat against the warm pavement. The sensation neared orgasmic.

 

As the sun disappeared, I saw Venus across the field. Rigel. Deneb brightened, and I made out Cygnus the Swan. Home was pretty if you overlooked the fresh graves behind the church.

 

Besides the headaches, I hadn't mentioned something else to Mulder. About twenty percent of women experienced mittelschmerz: a minor, harmless, localized pain at ovulation, perhaps caused by the ovum passing through the ovarian wall. I was among that twenty percent since age thirteen, until my abduction. Most women didn't experience mittelschmerz every menstrual cycle, though. Factor in injuries, exhaustion, and distractions like invisible elephants and human lightning rods, and overlooking a brief pain every few months seemed reasonable. I didn't worry. But I had noticed.

 

"We have a relationship," my partner pointed out. "You and me, Scully. I called my neighbor to have him feed my fish one more day, and he said 'some woman' stopped by my apartment. Slid a note under my door. 'Not Agent Scully,' my neighbor said, 'some other pretty woman. Some pretty blonde woman.' That's a relationship, Scully: when any woman besides you is automatically 'some other pretty woman.'"

 

I looked at Mulder in the purple and orange light. "Thank you for the compliment, but that's not a relationship, Mulder. That's codependence." 

 

"Codependence is, by definition, a relationship." He shrugged one shoulder. "Now all we need is tequila. Throw in some popcorn, and it's a date."

 

I sighed. "Get in the car, Mulder. This case is over. Charlie and his family are still visiting, and Mom wants everyone at brunch at 10:00AM tomorrow morning."

 

Mulder looked crushed. "Your mother didn't invite me. I love Baby Brother Charlie."

 

Mulder never met Baby Brother Charlie.

 

Crickets chirped. An owl hooted. I took a slow breath. "Five minutes," I said. "Five minutes for you to wrap this up, and you get on my laptop and write our report as I drive." I scooted back on the sedan's hood, getting my last marginally-clean pair of slacks filthy but giving my feet and back a break. "What is it you're wanting to do?"

 

"I want to uncover the truth about alien visitation on this planet and government experimentation on its own unwitting citizens. Protect the innocent." Orchestral music should have built toward crescendo as he spoke. "Right wrongs. Expose the guilty."

 

"And you think you'll do that from a parking lot in Home, Pennsylvania?"

 

"I can't even get the Knicks’ game in Home, Pennsylvania."

 

I rolled my eyes. "Oh my God, Mulder. I'm exhausted and I'm starving. Whatever your point or purpose, please get to it."

 

Mulder eased back on the hood so he sat beside me. His legs dangled. He leaned with his hands against the hood, fingers spread. Like he had all the time in the world.

 

Mulder and I had four years and three months until the colonists' ships arrived. Walter and Sharon Skinner must have celebrated their anniversary at The Greenbrier Resort the previous year; by October 1996, their seventeenth wedding anniversary, Sharon Skinner had been comatose for months. Captain Houston's green-eyed daughter was a kindergartener, and Blonde Leo's older son, a preschooler. Emily's age. Mulder and I hadn't met Leonard Betts or Gerry Schnauz. Neither Mulder nor I had been exposed to the Purity virus. We'd never kissed. We'd never made love. Fox Mulder was just my partner. My brilliant, infuriating, noble partner.

 

Mulder looked up at the darkening night sky. So far away from city lights, each moment after sunset brought new stars. I saw the foggy path of the Milky Way, with its two-hundred billion stars poured across the velvet darkness. So many worlds. So many possibilities. I never said nothing was out there; I said, scientifically, it shouldn't be visiting Earth.

 

"What if this was my life?" Mulder asked. "A normal little life? I grew up in a place like this. What if I was sheriff in a small town where no one locked their doors? If I had a secondhand patrol car and a mouthy fifteen-year old kid and a wife who baked muffins and cookies? What if that was my body instead of Sheriff Taylor's waiting for that grave? Do you think I'd feel like I'd done what I was supposed to do?"

 

The answer was obvious. "No. That's not who you are."

 

"Who are you, Scully? Who are any of us?"

 

In 1995 - a date recent then but prehistoric now - a man named Clyde Bruckman claimed I wouldn't die. Not of cancer. Not at the hands of some monster or mutant or serial killer. I wouldn't be ripped apart by an alien reproductive virus, and I wouldn't fall victim to the infinite dangers of After. It's still too soon to draw a definitive conclusion regarding my mortality, but I know this: Mulder won't die. Fox Mulder, pornography connoisseur, social recluse, denied himself so much in his quest for the truth. He didn't date, he didn't take vacations; he eschewed all trappings of a normal life as he fought to save humanity. I had his back. And Mulder saved us. Not in the way he'd wanted, but in a way retold over campfires until, like the stories of the stars, it became legend. By choosing courage over complacency, even when all seemed lost. By being true to who he was and what he believed, and even so, Amen.

 

"Who are we? We are the sum of our genetics, our circumstances, and our choices." I asked hopefully, "If this is an existential crisis, Mulder, could you have it at Applebee's?"

 

Apparently not. Mulder pointed at the northern sky. "Cassiopeia."

 

I took Mulder the Indian Guide's hand and moved it twenty degrees to the W laying on its side in the northeast. "Do you know Tycho Brahe?"

 

"Did he play for the Cardinals?"

 

"Not unless the Cardinals existed in sixteenth century Denmark. Tycho Brahe was the last of the naked-eye astronomers, mere decades before Galileo invented the telescope. In 1572, Brahe observed what he believed was a new star in Cassiopeia. He saw a supernova, but the idea of a new star not of divine origin and not orbiting the Earth, like the other 'wandering stars' - that was a dangerous observation. Tycho Brahe stood his ground, though. He told his king and everyone else the truth, not what they wanted to hear." I added, "He also lost the tip of his nose in a duel over a mathematics problem, and so wore a false nose for the remainder of his life."

 

"He sounds like your kind of guy, Scully."

 

"He was, except for his common-law wife, eight children, and being dead for the last four centuries."

 

The breeze rustled Mulder's hair. Through my blazer, I felt the warmth of his skin against my arm. The night was beautiful. Romantic even, if the breeze didn't smell of manure and fresh graves.

 

I bet the bar at Applebee's served tequila. A margarita on FBI time sounded magnificent.

 

"The sum of our genetics, our circumstances, and our choices," Mulder said to himself. "Are you telling me I need a new nose?"

 

I got down from the hood and pushed my feet into my shoes. "I'm telling you we have a five-hour drive, a report to write before Monday morning, and I want to stop at the Applebee's in Punxsutawney for a salad. I'm armed, Mulder. Famished and armed, and tired of this miserable town. Get in the damn car."

 

Mulder slid off the hood grudgingly. He dusted off his backside and reached in his pants pocket. "Do you know Stan Musial, Scully?"

 

I scanned my memory. I knew Stan Lee, Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Miller the chemist, and a nice clerk named 'Stan' at my local grocery store. "No," I admitted.

 

Mulder turned toward me as we stood in front of the sedan. "Stan Musial. Stan the Man. He played for the Cardinals. He was so well-loved by his fans he invented something to avoid legions of germs transmitted by shaking hands with them. Do you know what he invented, Dr. Scully?"

 

"Mulder, you have me at a disadvantage here."

 

Mulder held out his hand, palm down, fingers and thumb folded in. "Rather than shaking hands, Stan the Man invented the first bump."

 

"I'm pretty sure the 'fist bump' gesture predates the Cardinals."

 

Mulder continued holding out his fist. He gave me an eager, boyish 'go ahead' nod. I sighed and bumped my knuckles against Mulder's. His hand opened, and the car keys fell downward. I caught them.

 

Mulder got in the passenger seat and plugged his cell phone into the cigarette lighter, as if my cell phone wasn't as dead as his. He also overlooked our agreement about using my laptop to write our report. The corner of his lips twitched as I adjusted the driver's seat four inches forward, but my partner wisely kept his mouth shut.

 

The sedan's headlights came on as I started the engine. Our radio station choices were Loretta Lynn, public radio, and a local AAA baseball game. I let Mulder have the baseball game, but I turned the volume down.

 

Mulder opened his window. The wind had changed direction; I smelled damp autumn leaves. I read Mulder's expression as wistful. Still wishing for a simple little life that wasn't his.

 

I turned the car around in the church parking lot, and the headlights flashed over the Peacock house. The state road beside the church held no other cars in either direction. The sounds of night drifted through Mulder's open window, and small-town baseball played over the radio. The stars covered us, and the fields stretched out forever.

     

I hadn't loved Fox Mulder, then. Not in the traditional sense. I liked him immensely. I respected his passion and his dedication, even when he infuriated me. Which was often, in those days. Sometimes, though, I felt a flutter. He'd look at me or touch me or tuck my hair back, and I felt a flicker like Tycho Brahe's star momentarily returning to life. I'd see the lonely man behind the quest, and I felt something more. I called it friendship. I called it friendship for a long, long time.

 

I think Mulder did the same thing.

 

If we could have looked at the sky and seen the ships approaching, perhaps we would have examined those flickers more closely. Perhaps not, though. Strong bonds form slowly and under extreme duress.

 

"Don't you want a normal life, Scully?" Mulder asked as I drove an FBI fleet sedan through the night, down the stick-straight, two-lane Pennsylvania road. "A life with a guy who has more than X-files and fish?"

 

"There's more to you than X-files and fish. There's a masterful command of Windows 95 and the English language which should allow you to get my laptop out and write our report."

 

My laptop remained in my briefcase in the back seat. Mulder never typed a single word of that report. I didn't get a salad from Applebee's, either. Thirty minutes later, Mulder would spot some truck stop from the highway, get excited, and my dinner would be the fruit plate in a shrine to E-coli and arteriosclerosis. The fruit was canned.

 

"We make a good team," Mulder told me that night, as fence posts blurred past in the darkness. "You and me, Scully."

 

I didn't admit the truth to Mulder, but he was right. We'd survived too much to pass as normal people. We carried too many scars and we had buried too much loss. That idyllic world Mulder coveted - it no longer existed for us. In reality, it no longer existed for anyone.

 

Still, together, we might save the world that remained.

 

                    ***

 

End: SN 1572

 

Note: Thanks to mimic for beta-reading. Twice.

 


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